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LONDON: Feeding wild birds on bread and seed encourages high densities of introduced bird species at the expense of native species, thereby altering urban bird communities, according to a new study
Feeding wild birds is a hugely popular pastime worldwide. But this is essentially a massive global supplementary feeding experiment with ecological effects that are poorly understood. A newly-published study of bird feeding in New Zealand reports that the common practice of feeding bread and seed alters the species composition observed in urban bird communities such that introduced bird species were the big winners at the expense of native birds. The study suggests that supplementary feeding of bread and seed encourages higher densities of introduced bird species, which may in turn, decrease local populations of native bird species.
