You are currently browsing the daily archive for March 7th, 2007.
This article is by birding expert, George H. Harrison.
March is the most difficult month of the year for birds to find adequate food to survive winter in most of North America. That’s because the supplies of natural food, last year’s seeds, fruits, berries and insect eggs and larvae, are at their lowest levels after months of birds feeding on them. March is too early for a new crop of seeds, fruits, berries, and insects to be available. Therefore, birds have to work harder to find sufficient food during a month when it is still very wintry in much of the country.
That’s why March is the best time of the year to feed birds in the backyard. They will respond more readily to feeder foods offered in March than at any other time of the year. Isn’t it curious that in fall, October and November, when natural foods are most abundant, people take the greatest interest in feeding birds? It is in fall when there are the greatest number of bird seed sales, bird feeding seminars, bird store sales, and start-up backyard bird feeding efforts. By March, the interest in bird feeding has waned, at a time when the birds need it most.
Though birds are not dependent on feeders for their survival (studies have shown that birds glean 75 percent of their daily food from the wild, even when feeder foods are available), feeding them in March will make life a little easier for them, and under severe conditions, may even save them from starvation.
I participated in this year’s Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC). I counted my backyard birds Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, February 16, 17, and 18.
Checklists flooded into the count at an unprecedented rate, breaking records for most checklists submitted in one hour (1,944), and breaking the all-time GBBC record of 61,049, and reports are still coming in! There was an amazing response of participants from around the United States and Canada.
This year’s recordbreaking statistics
Total Checklists Submitted: 79,087
Total Species Observed: 626
Total Individual Birds Counted: 10,835,607
Visit Bird Source – Great Backyard Bird Count to see the results and view the photo gallery.
