FORT NELSON WINTER BIRD STUDY BLOG 

STUDENT PEN NAMES: Mockingjay, Kittyhawk, Chickadee, Redrobin

ASPIRE MENTORS: Matt Gilbert, April McLeod, Chen Morin and Halloween Leduc

OBSERVATIONS: We love birds.  Everything about them. We have observed Ravens and Crow, Robins, Chickadees, Woodpeckers, Blue Jays, Red Finches, Grouse and many more in the Fort Nelson area. Our ECP group invited April

Macleod  We wanted to get to know our feathered friends a little better by taking a closer look at their unique feeding behaviours.

QUESTION: What types of bird food do FN birds prefer and how do the feeding behaviours of birds differ?

HYPOTHESIS: From our current research we have learned that birds love mixtures of food including, suet, mixed seeds, sunflower seeds which they love to pick out of the mixed seed.  Many people in the Fort Nelson area of indicated that the birds prefer sunflowers and because of that we believe that they will eat the black oiled and striped sunflower seeds.

PROCEDURE:
 Steps
1. Design and build a  bird house (see image to the right. We needed a bird house that could house four different types of bird feed.  The design is brilliant!  Kittie Hawk’s dad built  it ….we just added the flowers and food.

Our Bird Feeder	Method of Measuring Seeds Eaten
Figure 2. Chickadee Mockingjay Kitty Hawk and Redrobin ( left to right ) pose with our bird feeder.	Figure 3 . Chickadee and Kitty Hawk measure and marking millilitres. (mL)

2.  Next we made a paper chart showing millilitres. we will tape this to the side of the bottles.   This will allow us to measure the amount of of birdfood that was  eaten.  We did this by filling up the bottle and marking on a paper every time we took out 60ml. of yellow water.

3. Tape a chart to all the bottles

Bottle with Measurement Strip	Bottles filled withSeeds
Figure 4. Redrobin is holding our bottle With the measuring chart.	Figure 5. Bottle 1 Nyjer Bottle 2 Mixed Bottle 3 Striped sunflower Bottle 4 Black Oil sunflower

4. Fill bottle #1 with Nyjer, bottle, #2 with Mixed Seed, bottle # 3 with Black Oiled Sunflower Seeds, and bottle #4 with Striped Sunflower Seeds.

5. Drill holes in the bottle caps so just a little bit of food will some out.

6. Mount the filled bottles in the feeder with elastic bands.

7. Once the bird feeder is mounted outside it will be time to start monitoring the feeder at regular times to see what birds visit.

8. Monitoring the Bird Feeders
Use the info sheets provided by April Mcleod, our Bird Expert to identify the birds at the feeder. We will try to use a camera, to take pictures of the birds to confirm our identifications.

Below  is the Chart we plan to use to collect data. Click to make larger.

9. After each monitoring session we will get an estimate of the amount of seeds consumed for each quadrant,  We may have to take the bottles off the bird feeder to get an accurate reading.

10. Analyse Data (Click to enlarge Tables and Charts.)

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN:
The things we are going to try to keep constant in this study are:We put the bird food in the same kind of bottles and we used the same type of bird feeder.  The method of measuring  the seed was consistent.
Our manipulated variable of independent variable  are the 4 kinds of bird foods we have in the bottles.  Nyjer,  Mixed Seed,  Black Oiled Sunflower Seeds, and Striped Sunflower Seeds.
The responding variable is how much each bird ate at the experiment bird feeder.

DATA: We collected data using a pre-made data chart.

We have a video showing typical feeding behaviour of tree sparrows and chickadees birds. We would like to include it if possible but the end of the year is approaching fast.

 

RESULTS

Over the four days that we observed the bird feeder in the morning, afternoon and evening. The birds most frequently chose to feed before school in the morning. On day four there were 3 Dark Eyed Juncos, 1 Chickadee and a sudden group of 18 American Tree Sparrows  that visited the bird feeder after school.  Because of the sudden visitation of the 18 American Tree Sparrows the average number of birds feeding during the afternoon was the highest.

When do Birds Come to the Feeder?	When do Birds Visit the Feeder?	Number of Birds Visiting the Feeder?
Figure 9. This chart indicates how frequently birds came in the morning , afternoon , or evening.	Figure 10. This is a chart showing the time of day the birds came most frequently feed. Most often the birds feed in the morning.	Figure 11. This chart show the number of birds during the afternoon

 Preferred Food Chart

Birds ate from the Black Oiled  Sunflower seeds 10 out of 15 times .

Birds ate from the Striped seeds 4 out of 15 times .

Birds ate from the Mixed seeds 7 out of 15 times .

Birds ate from the Niger seeds 5 out of 15 times .

12.  Here are some of the birds we have visiting our ASPIRE EXPERIMENT FEEDER.

Birds Observed At the ASPIRE Bird Feeder

Black Capped Chickadee	American Tree Sparrow	Dark Eyed Junco	Blue Jay
Photo by: Glenn Bartley	Photo by: Glenn Bartley	Photo by: Glenn Bartley	Photo by: Brian Kushner

Red Robin  and  Mockingjay’s sightings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONCLUSION:  WHAT DID YOU FIND OUT?  WHAT  HAVE YOU LEARNED?

Our investigation was designed to answer what types of bird food do FN birds prefer and how do the feeding behaviours of birds differ?
Food Preference
We  believed that FN winter birds would eat the black oiled and striped sunflower seeds.  Our data demonstrated that the FN Birds we observed do like the Black Oiled sunflower seeds the most.
Feeding Behaviour
Even though our data suggests that most birds eat in the afternoon it also suggest that the birds actually eat in the morning most frequently. We think that we got that large number of birds in the afternoon because the birds were migrating  north to breed in the Sub-Artic.  The huge amount of birds was the 18 American Tree Sparrow flock that flew through Fort Nelson on their way to nest in the the North.  This belief was confirmed by our Bird Expert who was following the birds north.

We also realize that the birds didn’t come to our feeder in the numbers we hoped to find because we put our feeder up later in the year so that means the birds knew where other feeders were.  The snow melted early this year and many of the FN Winter birds migrated early.

IDEAS FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS
Next year if we do this again we will change our way of measuring the food  and we will try and get our feeders up earlier in the year.

The time we put our feeders up was the main problem.  Next year we will definitely make some changes . If we did this experiment again we would set up our bird feeders in early fall, perhaps after the long weekend in October.  We would try to set up at least 3 feeders and collect data over a longer period of time.

We learned that our method of calculating the amount of food eaten was not working well. It was difficult to calculate the amount of food eaten each day, because the bottles were hard to detach from the feeder without spilling.   We would have to think more about this problem and test out a working solution.   We have talked about having 4 separate containers and just weighing the the amount of food eaten.

There are some key points  that people from Fort Nelson could take away from our research to improve their understanding of birds in the area.

• If you are thinking of setting up a feeder in your backyard be sure to set it up before the first snow.  That way birds will learn that your yard is a good source of food and visit regularily
• Be prepared to wake up early and enjoy the morning birds.
• Realize that different birds visit at different times of the year.  In April and May many migratory birds leave Fort Nelson and others come through in large flocks and continue their journey north or actually stay and nest.
• Remember feeding birds in summer is not recommended because of bears.  Birds usually do not have trouble finding food in late spring and summer.