Tweet Tweet What Will You Eat?: Seed Preferences of Northeastern Kansas Wild Birds Species

Oral Presentation
2:35-2:55 p.m. CDT on April 14, 2021

Seeds are a common food source for many wild bird species, and different kinds of seeds vary in nutritional composition. Birds exhibit feeding preferences for or against seed types depending on their nutritional needs. These nutritional needs are, in turn, affected by external factors, such as temperature. The goal of our project was to investigate whether northeastern Kansas bird species differ in their preference for seed types at different temperatures, based on fat versus carbohydrate content. We used two different types of seed: black oil sunflower seeds (relatively high fat content and low carbohydrate content) and cracked corn (relatively high carbohydrate content and low fat content). We hypothesized that as temperature decreased, more birds would prefer black oil sunflower seeds over cracked corn due to the high fat content. As the environmental temperature drops and it becomes more energetically costly for birds to maintain homeostasis, consuming a high-fat diet is advantageous because fat provides more calories per gram than carbohydrates. We placed pairs of sunflower seed feeders and cracked corn feeders, all hung on rope between trees, at three locations on the bluff behind the Ferrell Academic Center and monitored each pair with motion-activated wildlife cameras. We refilled feeders as needed to ensure that each seed type was always available. We analyzed the images from our wildlife cameras and recorded the species of each bird at the feeders, which feeder they visited, and the total number of visiting birds. Additionally, we recorded the temperature for each data collection period. We collected data continuously over seven weeks. From 238 pictures we found that nine species visited the sunflower feeders and five species visited the corn feeders. More birds visited the sunflower feeders than the cracked corn feeders with a ratio of 10:1. Each image had one to five birds in the frame. Temperatures ranged from -23°C to 25°C. We performed a logistic regression to determine whether temperature affected choice of seed. This gave us a test statistic of 5.25, which was larger than our critical value of 3.84. Our p-value was 0.022, and therefore, we rejected the null hypothesis that temperature does not affect wild bird seed preferences. These data provide insight into the nutritional needs of birds in colder temperatures, showing that birds prefer seed with a higher fat content over a higher carbohydrate content to more efficiently maintain homeostasis.

Madeline Jones, Bernadette Schrag, Virginia Winder, Terrence Malloy, Biology

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