Interest in wild bird feeding surged over the pandemic, a study has found.
Researchers used data from Google Trends to assess the weekly frequency of searches for terms including “bird feeder”, “bird food” and “bird bath” from January 2019 to May 2020. After two weeks of lockdown, there was a dramatic increase in bird-related searches.
These increases were seen in data from 115 countries spanning six continents. The lead author, Darryl Jones, professor of ecology at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, said the study was the first to investigate interest in bird feeding on a global scale.
“If bird feeding is common in other parts of the world, this could impact migration and disease patterns,” Jones said. “It is imperative that we understand the global extent of bird feeding in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of its potential impacts.”
Bird feeding, he said, had implications for human as well as bird wellbeing. For people, wild bird feeding is one of the most effective ways to connect with nature– and connection with nature has consistently been shown to benefit human health.
Spending as little as 10 minutes in nature can significantly enhance wellbeing, and exposure to nature has been linked to improved attention, lower stress and reduced risk of anxiety and depression.
Bird feeding can be beneficial for the birds, too: it can increase birds’ antioxidant levels, reduce their stress, and contribute to faster feather growth. Human feeding can provide a source of food for birds in times of scarcity that they otherwise may not have survived.
However, there are also concerns that feeding wild birds could affect their development. The kākā, a large species of parrot which was successfully reintroduced to Wellington, New Zealand, could develop bone disease as a result of being overfed with foods containing the wrong nutrients, the researchers warned.
Because of its potential impact on migration, bird feeding could also lead to a reshaping of the ecological communities of birds, which could affect biodiversity.
The authors also examined the link between interest in bird feeding and biodiversity. They found that in areas where there were more different species of bird, people were more interested in bird feeding.
Previously, it was thought that people were poor at quantifying biodiversity. For example, a study from Switzerland found that people overestimated the number of species present in their country by a factor of 30. This new research, however, implies that people have a sense of biodiversity, even if they cannot quantify it.
This could have its own implications for human wellbeing. Research has shown that people who have a greater awareness of the different species of birds in their own gardens gain more enjoyment from watching them and feel more connected to nature.
The study was published in the journal Plos One.