The Feeding Habits of West Vancouver Birds

Abstract

In this experiment, I offered three different types of food (a seed mix, suet and peanuts) to my local birds, with the objective of determining what they prefer. My hypothesis was that the birds would preferentially consume suet because of its high energy content and relative ease of consumption. I observed the birds that visited the feeders for 7 hours and weighed the remaining food once each hour. The food that was most consumed was peanuts, followed by suet, then seeds. The results were somewhat distorted by squirrels hording the peanuts. I observed that small species preferred the seeds, while large species preferred peanuts and suet lied somewhere in between.