How to Feed Backyard Birds: A Step-by-Step Guide for Kids
How to Feed Backyard Birds: A Step-by-Step Guide for Kids
Food is Energy
Like people, birds need food to produce heat to stay warm. Winter birds must find enough food each day to stay warm, or they will die overnight. Winter birds know how to find seeds, fruits and/or insects in their frozen habitats. Energy from this food is converted to warmth.
With insulating feathers and enough food, winter birds can survive the cold. Birds that can’t survive winter’s harsh conditions migrate south in the fall.
Chris Earley, the author of How to Feed Backyard Birds: A Step-by-Step Guide for Kids, is a zoologist and environment biologist and the Interpretive Biologist and Education Coordinator at The Arboretum, University of Guelph. This very practical and highly readable guide is divided into five major sections: “What Birds Eat”; “Feeders”; “Bird Life”; “Birds and People”; and a “Bird Guide”. The opening section, the longest, is subdivided into two-page subsections titled “Seeds”, “Peanuts and Suet”, “Nectar and Fruit”, “Water”, and “Native Plants and Gardens”.
“Feeders”, the next major section, provides solid information on the advantages and disadvantages of various types of feeder stations, including hopper, platform, and tube feeders, as well as feeders, such as the upside-down nyjer feeder, that are designed to exclude certain birds. In addition, Earley provides clear instructions for constructing three homemade feeders: a peanut butter spread feeder, a pine cone feeder and a pop bottle feeder.
“Bird Life” and “Birds and People” offer brief snippets of bird information with the latter segment also offering some suggestions for “Hand-feeding the Birds”.
The closing 10 pages of How to Feed Backyard Birds consist of a “Bird Guide”, with nine of the pages each containing coloured photos of four birds that readers could possibly see visiting their feeders. This section is introduced by a “Bird Identification” page that identifies the 13 parts that a bird could have, parts like wingbars, rump and crest, with the specifics of these parts assisting in a particular bird’s identification. This page also provides a “Legend” that links to the text-identifying information adjacent to each bird’s photo. The 36 birds are classified by their length, with the four descriptors ranging from “Very Small (1-14 cm)”, with the provided example being the Black-capped Chickadee, to “Large (23-30 cm)”, with the Blue Jay being cited. As well, the guide broadly identifies where these birds can be found in North America with “(All)” meaning “found across much of North America” and “(East)” and “(West)” indicating that the bird has a limited range. Though most of the birds in the guide have only one photo, 14 birds, with one being the Red-breasted Nuthatch”, have two smaller photos to show the difference in plumage between the females and males. The America Gold Finch is shown in both its winter and summer plumage while the Dark-Eyed Junco is portrayed in both its eastern and western variants. More readily recognizable birds, like robins, Baltimore Orioles and hummingbirds, that have appeared amidst the book’s earlier text, are not found in the guide.
How to Feed Backyard Birds is a “must” purchase for libraries serving juveniles, and it most definitely has a place in home libraries.
Dave Jenkinson, CM’s editor, lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where, until he moved to a condo, was a regular feeder of birds, but he is still waiting to have a Black-capped Chickadee eat from his hand.