Abstract
Supplementary feeding of garden birds generally has benefits for both bird populations and human wellbeing. Birds have excellent colour vision, and show preferences for food items of particular colours, but research into colour preferences associated with artificial feeders is limited to hummingbirds. Here, we investigated the colour preferences of common UK garden birds foraging at seed-dispensing artificial feeders containing identical food. We presented birds simultaneously with an array of eight differently coloured feeders, and recorded the number of visits made to each colour over 370 30-minute observation periods in the winter of 2014/15. In addition, we surveyed visitors to a garden centre and science festival to determine the colour preferences of likely purchasers of seed feeders. Our results suggest that silver and green feeders were visited by higher numbers of individuals of several common garden bird species, while red and yellow feeders received fewer visits. In contrast, people preferred red, yellow, blue and green feeders. We suggest that green feeders may be simultaneously marketable and attractive to foraging birds.
Highlights
It has been estimated that 20–40% of people in the UK, North America, Australia and New Zealand regularly provide wild birds with additional food at some point in the year [1,2]
The primary aim of our research was to investigate the effect of feeder colour on the feeding preferences of wild birds
For great tits (Fig 2C, S2 Table), there was a significant effect of colour on number of visits (F7,259 = 2.671, p = 0.011)
Summary
It has been estimated that 20–40% of people in the UK, North America, Australia and New Zealand regularly provide wild birds with additional food (supplementary feeding) at some point in the year (typically during the winter months) [1,2]. In the UK, approximately 60% of households with gardens provide food for birds [3], estimated at 12.6 million households [1], 7.4 million of which use bird feeders [4]. As a result the UK wild bird feeding industry was estimated as being worth £210m per annum [5], and the wild bird care market rose 15% in value between 2014 and 2015 [6]. Some people (those involved in avian monitoring or research) feed birds in order to attract them for capture, measurement and subsequent release
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