humming birds
i’m visiting my grandpa in northern idaho at the moment. while we aren’t in a city (a town with a population ~100), we are still on paved roads and close to other residences, the really big difference is simply how close to forest service land we are. this presents some good oppurtunities to see city ecology from some different view points, like analyzing this as a more “nature” heavy area, or as a more clear example of change towards the city part of a city ecosystem.
sitting out on the deck I noticed a humming bird trying to get some sugar water from an empty humming bird feeder (there’s humming birds in the city, there are also humming bird feeders). This got me wondering if these feeders, while yes are providing to a humming bird population, are they not also taking away the times a humming bird would feed from a flower to pollinate it? Also is it a pollinator? I feel like I only really here of insects being pollinators, but of course anything that helps the process could be classified as such. My ecology professor Dan Franek demonstrated this by having us finger a variety of flowers in order to help them reproduce.
of course pollinators are dealing with pollen, however the general principle makes me think about the ways we are inadvertantly helping in the reproduction of species (like through our poop and passing of nutrients... like idealy if we were to eat a fruit (seeds and all) and poop right on the forest floor)... this original line of thought could be furthered to use simply needing to grow food, choosing to plant, so that we can harvest it and survive from it.
then again pollination+pollinators, and arguably farming is just a core aspect of ecology that paralells other forms of reproduction and interlocked coevolved species
but back to humming birds and feeders. do humming bird feeders have a net positive or negative? pollinator.org encourages growing native nectar plants, referencing discourse that feeders decrease use of plants, but in the end decides that feeders are a good way to help support local and migrating populations that have experienced habitat lose due to human activity. In the end this is a fairly nasty cycle of solutions to problems we created, disjoined from the functional ecosystem.
at first glance there wasn’t anything on google scholar about this topic, but here’s an article with an abstract; humming birds visit feeders less when flower abudence is high, the fear is that flowers in lower concentrations get skipped for the more economical feeder. further research needs to be done to say anything more definitive.
my grandpa has observed humming birds not coming near the feeder until later into the summer (when there are less flowers)
Though I also wonder about migration? would keeping the feeder out past the flowers disrupt migration? according to auduban, humming bird genetics have them leave due to their own internal clock and day length, nothing to do with flowers or tempurature. In the same post they provide a lot of other feeder specific advice--native nectar plants are still the best option though.
I see humming birds outside my house, I’m tempted to ask my neighbors if any of them have a humming bird feeder. If so, seems like they’re still going to the flowers, if not then it’s pretty cool there’s enough natural nectar (or is there ever enough)
What other animals do we feed? Aside from birds, all I can think of is stray cats--though that’s still just a classic pet (I’m not counting pets or livestock). There’s actually quite a variety of birds that get fed, beyond; suet, seed, and syrup. Some people feed crows, others feed ducks (which can be quite harmful), or even pigeons.
I just remembered worm compost bins