>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. ^M00:00:04 ^M00:00:20 >> Angel Vu: All right. Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for coming and joining us here at the Library on this beautiful day. My name is Angel Vu and I'm one of the reference librarians in the Business Section of the Science, Technology and Business Division at the Library of Congress. Along with my colleague, Sean Bryant, one of the reference librarians for the Science Section, we're pleased to welcome you to today's program titled, "Feeding Wild Birds in America, a Surprising History." For those who cannot join us today, the Library is recording today's presentation and it will be posted on the Library's website in a couple of months. Meantime we'd like to invite you to visit Science and Business Reference Services web pages, as well as our blog, "Inside Atoms," to keep abreast of upcoming lectures and other works. And should you wish to receive announcements from us, please visit loc.gov and click on the orange RSS icon to sign up. So today's speakers are Paul Baicich and Margaret Barker. They are going to discuss their book, "Feeding Wild Birds in America: Culture, Commerce, and Conservation." This book is the product of years of research along with co-author, Carrol L. Henderson, which is a Minnesota wildlife biologist. This book is going to explore how the simple practice of bird feeding is linked to the early bird preservation movement of the late 1800's and early 1900's, and how in recent decades it has become a multibillion dollar business. Thanks to a eureka movement, and an odd little book on hand taming wild birds, and the Cold War agriculture espionage today's standard bird feeding tools such as tube feeders, Nyjer seeds, and black oil sunflower seed are on the market today. So the authors are going to reveal how this popular hobby over the decades have helped change Americans' attitudes towards the natural world. Paul Baicich's teenage birding days in New York City led to a bird oriented career. Currently he is a bird and conservation writer and editor, as well as an avid tourism consultant. Most recently he has led birding trips to Cuba. Formerly with the American Birding Association, he is co-author of, "A Guide to the Nests, Eggs, and Nestlings of North American Birds." He co-edits the popular monthly "Birding Community E-Bulletin." Margaret Barker is a Tennessee native. She is a writer, speaker, and educator in the Chesapeake Bay area. She interned in the Washington, D.C. office of the National Audubon Society before joining the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. There she coordinated the Cornell Lab's Project Feeder Watch and later worked with Cornell University's agriculture outreach gardening program. She is co-author of "The Feeder Watcher's Guide to Bird Feeding," and the "Audubon Bird House Book." So without further ado I'd like to introduce you our speakers today, Paul Baicich and Margaret Barker. ^M00:04:08 [ Applause ] ^M00:04:13 >> Margaret Barker: Well, thank you very much, Angel. And we are so glad to be here at the Library of Congress and here in the Mary Pickford Theater, wow. And, again, thanks very much to Angel Vu and Sean Bryant in the Science, Technology, and Business Division. It has been so great to work with you guys the past couple of months. You've taken care of everything and thank you very much. And thanks also, and I don't know if she's here right now, but to Rosemary Haynes in the Motion Picture Division. She helped us with our research here. And we'll have more on that in just a little bit. And thanks to all of you for joining us for a lunchtime talk. We appreciate it. Well, in the middle of this slide here you can see our co-author, Carrol Henderson, surrounded by many, many types of bird feeders he makes himself. Carrol is the head of the non-game division for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. And some of you might know his books, his conservation work, his media interviews on NPR, and elsewhere. And Paul and I are very proud to be his co-authors. So our talk is about the surprising history of bird feeding because when we began our research for a Wild Bird Centers of America pamphlet we were surprised by what we found. It turns out that the story of bird feeding is a conservation story and yet it is also one of big business. Bird feeding is a lot more that giving wild birds yummy treats like peanut butter pine cones you see here. Bird feeding today is important economically but it also helps people connect to the natural world. It caught on in the late 1800's and has grown more popular over the years, even becoming a family tradition over generations as in my own family. The reasons to feed wild birds and the ways to feed them have changed considerably. >> Paul Baicich: We're at a point today where the popularity of feeding birds is pervasive. Well, how many people are actually feeding birds or watching birds in their backyard? According to the 2011 National Survey on Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife Associated Recreation from the Fish and Wildlife Service, there are about 41.3 million people who engage in some level of watching birds in their backyard and feeding them. It's a huge, it is impressive, and it continues to grow. How has it grown? Let's compare the figures, if you would, between the 2006 survey on Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife Associated Recreation and the 2011 survey. Well, we see here, in terms of the amount of bird food sold in 2006, it was about 3.35 billion, with a B, in the United States and even after the Great Recession in 2011 it had increased to $4.6 billion. Using your seventh grade math you can figure out that that was an increase of 21.4 percent. Similarly, parallel side in terms of feeders, bird boxes, and bird baths we went from $790 million worth of commerce in 2006 to 970 million in 2011. A concomitant parallel increase of about 22.8 percent. Social scientists, of course, find this very comforting when the figures seem to correspond. Yes, there are 41.3 million backyard bird watchers. And it's significant. What does the backyard bird yard look like? Well, the birds favor a bird friendly environment including native plants particularly in the yard, a broad selection of feeders, nest boxes to supplant missing cavities in dead branches. Of course if there's a dead branch hanging over your home, you don't want it there so you take it down. That's decreasing habitat for birds, by the way. So you can supplement that by putting up a bird box so those woodpeckers, chickadees, and nuthatches can find places to nest. They nest in cavities. There's a tendency toward less lawn, less pesticides, and more ground cover when you're dealing with this kind of bird friendly backyard. It is important to appreciate that bird feeding is not necessary for the birds. Bird feeding is not for the birds. It's for us. They can do well without our feeding. It is enjoyment for us human beings to bring them closer to us in the backyard. It is supplemental to what they get in the native situation, in the natural situation. There are only two exceptions: If there is a severe drought in a dry area, or if there's an increasingly hostile and heavy snow cover and ice where the birds can't get to the ground. Then you indeed may have some impact on the local population. But by and large it's for us more than it is for them. So our book, and indeed our talk, will cover decade by decade coverage, mostly the twentieth century, basically from the 1890's into our twenty-first century. ^M00:10:09 We cover the start of bird feeding in the late 1800's, the bird preservation movement which followed that; the discoveries of and innovations of the nineteen teens and the 1920's; experimentation during hard times in the Depression and World War II; growth of postwar America prosperity: The backyard, the barbeque, the garden, the bird feeding scene; trial and error period of the 60's; growth in the 70's and 80's; as well of the development of a multi-million-dollar industry into the twenty-first century. So we'll start with the late 1800's and early 1900's. >> Margaret Barker: Well, today we have laws protecting wild birds, importantly the Migratory Bird Treaty Act signed in 1918. But in the late 1800's U.S. birds were in trouble. Backyard birds like cardinals could be caged and sold as song birds. Birds were killed for their feathers for women's hats and more. And species of all kinds were on the menu. And they were over hunted. Scientists studied birds' economic value and usefulness. Bird feeding helped teach people about their bird neighbors. And the case was made that if you feed good birds, they'll return the favor and stay around your home and farm and eat weed seeds and harmful insects. Professor Beal, in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Biological Survey Division, documented what birds ate. His "Farmer's Bulletin Number 54" was in print for many years. His colleague, Waldo McAtee, summed up Beal's importance to birds this way: "He did more than any other man to reveal the basic facts that were needed to convince the so-called "practical" men of the value of bird protection." >> Paul Baicich: As Margaret just indicated, this economic ornithology, as it was called, was connected to agriculture. There were good birds and there were bad birds. There were birds that were advantageous to the farmer and disadvantageous. And it's important to appreciate that primitive attitude towards science and the economy in comparison to what we do today. And part of the change occurred during the bird preservation movement, that birds, in and of themselves, had value. The movement to ban the trade of birds, and to save them, and to make sure that they were persistent into the future rotated around the effort to ban the feather trade in particular. Florence Merriam Bailey is a good characteristic and representative of that woman's movement by and large and representative of the era. In 1886, as a student at Smith College in Massachusetts, she recruited hundreds of her colleagues, young women, to form an Audubon Society to stop the feather trade. By thirteen years later she had matured to such a level that when she moved to Washington, D.C., with her brother, here, Washington, D.C., her brother by the way was C. Hart Merriam, who headed the U.S. Biological Survey, the predecessor to Fish and Wildlife Service. She was able in 1898 to lead classes here in Washington, D.C. about the value of birds and the appreciation. And that very same year she had published "Birds of Village and Field," which introduced many, many people to the interest and curiosity of bird life and the possibility of feeding them. The same time her female colleagues such as [Inaudible], Mabel Osgood Wright, and Oliver Thorne Miller were doing similar and parallel activities. The bird preservation movement stopped the slaughter with the 1900 Lacey Act. They were successful and, by the way, this was a woman's led movement when the women didn't even have the right to vote. In this effort to adorn female garb with feathers the entire bird was killed, in this case, egrets, for one plume of the hat. The destruction of colonies, because these kinds of feathers only appeared when birds were in breeding plumage, the entire destruction of colonies and the death of young were a byproduct of that. But it stopped with the passage of the Lacey Act of 1900. >> Margaret Barker: So the study of living birds got a lot easier with the development of opera and field glasses, cameras, and handy field guides. A 1907 book published by Massachusetts ornithologist, Edward Howe Forbush, was widely distributed. "Useful Birds and their Protection" included his family's bird feeding practices and reasons to protect the birds. And also importantly in 1900, the Christmas Bird Count began and it continues today. Instead of killing as many birds as possible on Christmas Day, which was a tradition, people counted them instead. Feeder birds are a part of these counts. And during our research we kept coming across the name, Berlepsch. There were Berlepsch food sticks, Berlepsch food houses and feeders of all kinds. So who was this guy? He was Hans Friar Von Berlepsch. He lived until 1933. He was a German aristocrat known as "the bird man." And he managed his family's centuries-old estate of Sebock [phonetic] near Essen, Germany. And he experimented with wild bird feeding. U.S. Audubon Chapters printed a book on his practices and in this way spread the bird feeding word among members. >> Paul Baicich: You can see here, by the way, an image of one his colleagues pouring melted suet onto evergreen or blocks, how to make suet blocks. And these are molds in this case. Or this interesting kind of gravity feeder that he had. In any case, Berlepsch's ideas were picked up, as Margaret said, by Americans, translated, distributed. And one of the people who picked it up was Waldo Lee McAtee who worked for the Department of Agriculture. In this, probably the first bulletin done by the United States government on attracting and feeding birds. It's Department of Agriculture Bulletin, number 621, entitled, "How to Attract Birds in Northeastern United States." And you see the figure, the image of a chickadee coming to somebody's hand. It was done in 1914. And he pointed to certain advantages to putting, say, an edge or a trim around the tray feeder at your window, or filling up cans, opened at both ends, with stuffed suet and just birdseed, a combination of that, or, in this case, in the middle here, a hollowed out coconut opened at both ends where suet and birdseed would be stuffed. McAtee said that the size of the hole was very important and it would, in his words, "The size of the hole regulates the character of the guests." He worked on even more elaborate designs: Food hoppers, not unlike those used to feed domestic birds such as chickens. More on coconuts later. McAtee also, in the discussion of this standard feeding tray, which we came across multiple times from the early 1900's into the 20's, would be a flat tray, they all looked the same, a flat tray with a trim, and a hopper feeder here that was developed out of the design for feeding chickens. And sometimes it would have a brace which you could lower during the summertime, non-feeding time. And they would all have de riguer branch of evergreen which somehow would attract the birds and keep them happy. He would also design, suggest designs, for fences to keep cats away, as you see in the center here. And those things which we know commonly now for feeders and for bird boxes, predator guards to keep squirrels and other predators out. By the nineteen teens, late teens, early 20's, we have the magazine of the era, of the bird watching era, "Bird Lore," as it was called, the predecessor to Audubon. In 1913 we have here some of the first advertising coming up. This is Joseph Dodson's bird feeder and his very useful banish the sparrow, banish the English sparrow, the house sparrow trap to get rid of them, these invading immigrants that had come over to the United States and had been released. You'll notice here in this particular image the weather vane feeder with these paddles that stick out. ^M00:20:00 They would help rotate the feeder with the wind, like a weather vane, to keep the seed from blowing out. It was a characteristic design that appeared at least through the 1940's. You'll also see here, speaking of house sparrows or English sparrows, Saunders' 1917 anti-house sparrow feeder. It was attracted to some birds but it would discourage house sparrows, English sparrows. It would be an upside down situation with kind of a design that would look like a squared off wooden frying pan held upside down with the seed in this little bay area and attractive, the birds that could be attracted would be more desirable than the house sparrows that couldn't get in there. Next we have at the same period a poster, Margaret. >> Margaret Barker: Well, we had seen this 1917 poster mentioned in "Bird Lore Magazine," and finally found it, finally, in the National Archives. It was printed, no surprise, by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bureau of Biological Survey. You can see here there's that weather vane feeder again and you see that so often during this period. There's some wonderful quotes on here, too. "If you feed the birds, they will repay you by destroying thousands of insects that harm gardens, trees, and crops." And, this is the one I really like, "Begin to feed the birds today. The singing laborer is worthy of his hire." So of the times. This is an image from the 1917 Edison Studios silent film we found here at the Library of Congress and wherever you are, thank you again, Rosemary Haynes. The film shows Boy Scouts helping birds in winter and here is a Boy Scout with a homemade coconut feeder once again. And we're excited to show this rare short film at the end of our talk today. People in hard times, people had to feed their families but many still could find the means to feed the birds. This poster is from a Feed the Birds campaign launched by the Federal Cartridge Corporation. And here's is a 1935 "Bird Lore" ad. You can see Berlepsch inspired feeders as well as some simple suet feeders. But note the little trolley, or pulley feeder, that would fit onto a clothesline. And a special note, anyone who bought these items might be interacting with Roger Tory Peterson who ran this Audubon Department when he was 27 years old and had recently written his now classic field guide. >> Paul Baicich: Then we move to another popular crop of the early 1900's which was hemp. Hemp was a common bird seed. That is cannabis, mentioned even in that 1917 poster that we just saw, and it was commonly available at agricultural feed stores. It was used, hemp was used, to make cloth, paper, rope, today even in some places luggage, and auto parts, believe it or not. This is not to be confused with the variety of psychoactive hemp but it was very low in THC and it was extremely desirable for birds, the seed was. Of course the very effort of the 1937 congressional action against hemp made this more difficult to get but it had a revival in World War II when, if you're interested, the Department of Agriculture in the war effort, pushed the increased production of hemp, particularly for our United States Navy for making their rope and cordage. It got so great that farmers in particularly Kentucky and Wisconsin started with about 14,000 acres of hemp being grown in 1942 to 146,000 acres in 1943. The vast increase to help the war effort. You can Google "Hemp for Victory," by the way, under YouTube and see the 14 minute film yourself which I reviewed this morning before my talk. Also during the war there was very much activity in the terms of rationing and this had an impact on bird feeding. People were giving their extra suet, their beef fat, over to the war industry. For what? For munitions. So you were less than patriotic if you were feeding suet to the birds but more patriotic is you were handing it over to the community collections to help the war effort. Similarly, sugar with hummingbird feeders was hard to come by because sugar was rationed. So there was some controversy and some dismay over using sugar for your coffee, what little you had, for yourself or sharing with the birds in your hummingbird feeder. Rationing in World War II however, in the positive side if you could look at it in terms of the birds view, was peanuts and peanut butter wasn't rationed. So peanuts and peanut butter became extremely popular, both in the backyard and in the lunchbox on the home front, and, by the way, among C-rations with our boys overseas at the time. It was not rationed and it so became extremely popular so by the end of the war it was an established staple, that is to say peanut butter was an established staple. And those of us who grew up as post-war baby boomers suffered the consequences. Next. >> Margaret Barker: Arm and Hammer baking soda bird cards promoted bird feeding and bird study. They were printed from the late 1800's until 1938. In 1976 the company printed a special birds of prey set and I invite you to go and see Paul's poster over here where he's got the entire collection in one poster. And it's quite something to see. The cards are very collectible now, by the way. And what we're showing here is a male downy woodpecker on a piece of suet that is simply tied to a tree which is the way suet was offered quite often in those days. Well, Duncraft has made bird feeding products since the 1950's. And Gildon's [phonetic] wartime aviation experience, you can see, inspired this flight deck window feeder. >> Paul Baicich: By the 1960's we're dealing with seeds now being sold away from the agricultural scene, away from those warehouses and onto grocery stores. A and P, Safeway, Food Fair, Kroger's, and others started actually having packaged birdseed, mixed seed, not necessarily the best quality but certainly available to the general public to correspond with the growth of suburbia. This is an ad from the November-December "Audubon Magazine" here, Hyde feeders and it was sponsored by the Hyde Feeder Company of Waltham, Massachusetts, run by Don Hyde. You'll notice also in the upper left-hand corner the characteristic, Flint Stone-esque image here of a cartoon character watching birds. I also have put in here the house finch, a bird that was accidentally released in the New York City area, Long Island in the 1940's and spread throughout the east. And I put this in because its spread in the 1960's and 70's was chronicled by feeder watchers, people who started noticing these strange birds at their feeder that they hadn't expected before. We also have here the rise in the 70's and 80's of the first of the franchise companies of birdseed specialty stores, namely Wild Birds Unlimited, founded in 1981, and Wild Bird Centers of America, founded in 1985. The first Wild Birds Unlimited run by Jim Carpenter, the second by George Petrides whom Margaret mentioned at the beginning of the talk who originally helped us get our project started. And there are many, many, many independent stores around the country today selling lots of seed and products for the backyard bird scene. At the same time we have the bird seed preference period of the 70's and 80's. This is a photo of Dr. Alred Guise at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. He published a bird food preferred study, a study in 1980. He tested about 15-16 different kinds of seeds and it was the first serious study of bird preference, whether they liked oats, wheat, rice, sunflower, milo, millet, whatever. In the words of George Petrides, who found the Wild Bird Centers of America, "Before Al Guise picked up his pen no one knew what wild birds really liked to eat." He did a great job doing that. ^M00:29:55 >> Margaret Barker: Since the 1980's, the late 1980's, Project Feeder Watch has been a joint citizens-science effort of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Canada's Long Point Bird Observatory. A National Science Foundation grant in the early 1990's expanded the project and developed this poster for quick feeder bird ID and tens of thousands of these have been printed. We found in our research that sunflower, and Nyjer seeds, and hummingbird, and tube feeders are relatively new arrivals, each with intriguing back stories. >> Paul Baicich: First story is on sunflower seeds. We're going to go through each of these four stories. This is a picture on the right of Dick Baldwin, who worked in the Minnesota area for Cargill Corporation, looking up and researching seeds and certain plants. He was smart enough to ask for permission to visit the Soviet Union in the 1960's to examine what Vasillii Stepanovich Pustovoit, shown here, was doing at his remarkably successful breeding program of an industrial scale at Krasnodar. What he was doing there was modifying, and developing, and genetically pushing along the sunflower seeds, sunflower seeds that were highly rich in oil, much richer than any seeds available in the United States. In the United States we had about, oil at the time of the gray stripe traditional seeds, of about 28 percent oil before Dick went to visit Pustovoit in the Soviet Union he heard that it might be 38 or 40 percent richness. And indeed Pustovoit himself had been recognized but by two of the Soviet Union's highest award, the Order of Lenin and the Red Banner of Labor. And Pustovoit was a national hero of national and international significance. What he had developed, and Dick was looking at, was this darker oil. When Dick was taken through the industrial farms at Krasnodar he was shocked to see that these small black seeds had about 44 percent oil. And as the tour went on he and his Soviet colleagues were -- actually Soviet colleagues and the translator -- were basically chewing and eating this oil rich seed and spitting out the shells and he was horrified to see this rich stuff being used so freely. He asked of course if he could take a sample to the United States and was told that it was essentially a state secret, he could not do so. He was horrified even more. When he went back to his limousine [inaudible] with his translator to go back to the railroad station to take him back to Moscow his translator wrapped up her package of seeds in her napkin and slipped it over to Dick. Dick went to the embassy in Moscow and shipped it in a diplomatic pouch to Fargo, North Dakota, and the rest is history. So much for sunflower seeds. I bet you didn't know about that. It's all in the book. >> Margaret Barker: Nyjer seed. Nyjer seed is not thistle seed. Branding it thistle is marketing. Maybe because gold finches look really good on purple flowers, I don't know. The spelling was changed to N-y-j-e-r to avoid pronunciation of a racial epithet. Alfred Martin's 1963 book, "Hand Taming Wild Birds at the Feeder," described feeding Nyjer, a caged bird seed at the time, to his backyard finches. And he said, and he said in print that, "They absolutely loved it." So Nyjer was first imported for wild birds a few years after Martin's book. It comes mostly from Ethiopia and India where it is grown for cooking oil, and the cage, and wild bird markets. It is heat treated for not just weeds when it enters the U.S., and, in fact, up in Baltimore there is a small sterilization plant. Maryland ornithologist -- some of you might have known him, John Dennis, promoted bird feeding. And he promoted feeding Nyjer in his 1975 book, "A Complete Guide to Bird Feeding." And he clearly states there that Nyjer is not thistle. Recently many of us have put up hummingbird feeders because the hummers are back. It has taken decades to develop hummingbird feeders and sugar water recipes we use today. Early feeding accounts include one about John James Audubon at a Louisiana plantation in 1821 watching hummingbirds at flowers filled with sweetened wine. An 1899 "Bird Lore" article describes Clark University professor, Clifton Hodge, entertaining his students by attracting a hummer to flowers he had sprinkled with honey and hidden in his jacket pocket. In the late 1920's, retired banker, Ben Tucker, and wife, Dorothy Mae, started feeding hummers on their twelve acre property in Orange County, California. Here's Mr. Tucker in his shop, building a bird house. But he built hummer feeders, too. The first ones were prohibition era happy hour glasses with holes in tin lids just right for hummingbirds. Local birders visited the Tucker's famous outside hummingbird bar to sip cocktails and watch as many as 200 hummingbirds at a time. An improved Tucker design was a globe shaped chicken water fountain with a wire rail added for hummer perching. This was a popular design for a while created in 1928 by the husband of Edith Webster. He used a glass mixing tube from his lab at MIT an attached open spouts on the end. Edith tasted all the flowers in her New Hampshire yard to come up with a one part sugar to two parts water recipe. Today's standard mix is one part sugar to four parts water which is more like nectar flower. And today there are many new and different hummingbird feeder designs. Here's Droll Yankees' classic Little Flyer or Flying Saucer on the left and Perky Pets' unique pinched waist design on the right. Speaking of Droll Yankees. >> Paul Baicich: Yes. We go next to tube feeders. This is a picture from the late 1980's of a fellow by the name of Peter Kilham who founded the company, Droll Yankees. Peter was an inventor, an industrial designer, and nature enthusiast. He had innovations which later became the, this feeder, the A6F feeder. But he had also worked on teaching art work, engaging custom design, creating furniture, high end furniture. He had a number of industrial machines and received multiple patents. He was a kind of do-it-all fellow. His little company, launched in 1960, Droll Yankees, was based at his wharf situated workshop. And it basically had sold records. Some of you may remember those round objects, records. They were novelty records. It included Yankee storytelling and the recordings of birds, frogs, and tugboats. One afternoon after working with a colleague of his at the Rhode Island School of Design, he was helping his colleague do some elaborate modern art display of structure. I think it was in a lobby at RISD. There was leftover plastic tubing. Of course he was told by his colleague who was in charge of the project, "Peter, just go dispose of these. Get rid of them. It's extra." Having grown up in the Depression he wasn't going to throw anything away so he brought it back to his shop. He looked at it for about 20 minutes, scratched his head, figured, "If I put a cap on the top, a cap on the bottom of a foot and a half length, drill some holes, put in some dowels, hand it up, I can probably stuff some bird seed in it and it would become a bird feeder." Indeed, voila, 1968-69 we have the A6F. Here's the patent, 1969 patent for the feeder that we see everywhere. It's probably the most common feeder. And it is relatively new in terms of long term history. We'll go to, very quickly, the collective wisdom and experience of 120 years, the five major lessons that have been necessarily accumulated. The story of bird feeding reduced down to a bouillon cube, or at least five bouillon cubes. ^M00:40:00 Bird feeding in four seasons; providing water in four seasons; offering a variety of food; providing protection from predators; and clean feeders and ground areas regularly. We show old fashioned stuff on the left and the new stuff on the right. First, in terms of five ways of feeding success, all four seasons. When we began this narrative it was mainly feeding in the wintertime and it still is mainly feeding in the wintertime. But, you know, in Florida, in Texas, and southern California, and southeast Arizona wintertime isn't as tough as it is up here for some reason and they can feed all year and they do feed all year. And they weren't just limited to wintertime feeding, indeed you'll notice that the feeding has changed from the old hopper feeder with the requisite trim and evergreen here, shown from the nineteen teen's, to the feeder here in summertime with multiple different kinds of food including fruits and different levels. Next. >> Margaret Barker: Water of course is essential for backyard birds and it's fun to watch them drink and bathe. Birdbaths go back as far as the ancient Greeks and Romans. Water attracts more than feeder species. You might find bathing warblers, too, for example, especially this time of year. Moving water especially brings in the birds. >> Paul Baicich: The next way is to provide protection from predators, in this case -- oh, I'm sorry -- the next case is -- . >> Margaret Barker: Carrol's suggested backyard. This was developed by Carrol Henderson, our co-author. You can see a black and white image of a backyard from about the 1920's on the left. And on the right is Carrol Henderson's backyard. He says if you can do it and you want to get a lot of birds, use a total of twelve to fifteen feeders of many different types in groups of three to four each and offer a wide range of foods from different kinds of seeds to suet, grape jelly, apple and orange slices, meal worms, and sugar water. >> Paul Biacich: Next indeed is to provide protection from predators, in this case, in one case, cats. The picture on the left shows Tabby. This is Edward Howe Forbush's experiment of putting a bird that Tabby killed, a warbler, a yellow warbler I believe it was, around the neck of poor Tabby to teach it a lesson and to keep that dead, stinking bird around Tabby's neck for days, if not weeks. Needless to say, it didn't work. But Forbush, in 1960, wrote the classic piece, "The Domestic Cat: Bird killer, mouser, and destroyer of wildlife. Means of utilizing and controlling it." Well, there's decent ways to control it. One method is to maintain a ten foot clearance around sites that are hiding place free in terms of a ten foot clearance around your bird feeders. The opposite is to encircle the site with wire fencing. That keeps the bird feeder from becoming a cat feeder. Similarly, the next case is to provide protection from predators using good brush piles, offering the birds quick escapes from sky borne perils, either Cooper's hawks or Sharp-shinned hawks visiting the feeders. Birds do take readily to these brush piles. And if you keep the brush piles, again, away from the feeders, about ten feet away, it also keeps them from being hiding places for cats. >> Margaret Barker: The latest bird feeder designs are easy to clean and this is good news because people who have been feeding birds for a while know that some of those feeders were very hard to get really, really clean. Cleaning and disinfecting feeders and bird baths routinely is a best practice. And remember to change out your hummingbird sugar water nectar every couple of days. Every few days will do. Bird feeding is important today for many reasons. It's a good business. It's educational and entertaining. And it connects us to nature. Over decades the hobby has taken surprising twists and turns. Carrol Henderson's bird feeding tips build on the past to create safe and successful bird feeding in the twenty-first century. And we are going to leave you with what we first sought here at The Library of Congress, the now digitized silent film, "Caring for the Birds in Winter." And we are going to find -- I might need Dappen's [assumed spelling] help again -- that start button. There we go. All right. And this was made by Edison's Studios. We saw reference to it, found it here. Made by Edison's Studios, produced by Howard Cleaves who was at the Natural History Museum there in Staten Island. And it's mostly about Boy Scouts, Boy Scouts caring for the birds in winter. >> Paul Baicich: You will notice the almost military doughboy look of our World War I of these Boy Scouts in the winter putting in a pole, and putting a feeder on top with the trim. Notice the standard trim. ^M00:45:51 ^M00:45:53 >> Margaret Barker: Nice sheltered feeder. ^M00:45:56 ^M00:45:58 Now keep your eyes on the kids who are eating the peanuts. ^M00:46:02 [ Laughter ] ^M00:46:03 >> Paul Baicich: And this is a string of peanuts which isn't a common practice in the United States anymore. It's very common in Great Britain to have string of peanuts for the birds. And here they wrapped them around. >> Margaret Barker: We think that's a good bird feeder idea. ^M00:46:17 ^M00:46:23 So putting seed on the platform feeder there. >> Paul Baicich: Guests arrive for dinner. Okay. Oh, there are that many. >> Margaret Barker: They're thinking about it. Oh, there's one. >> Paul Baicich: Maybe juncos there. I can't -- it's hard to tell. >> Margaret Barker: Yeah. >> Paul Baicich: Ah. And here comes a chickadee. >> Margaret Barker: Always the first. >> Paul Baicich: Yeah. Black capped chickadee on the peanuts. ^M00:46:45 ^M00:46:49 There's some white breasted nuthatch I believe coming in. >> Margaret Barker: Mm-hmm. >> Paul Baicich: Upside down as it's wont to do. Almost woodpecker like but upside down. ^M00:47:00 ^M00:47:02 >> Margaret Barker: The camera liked this bird. ^M00:47:05 ^M00:47:07 And this is interesting to see how this was put up. >> Paul Baicich: [Inaudible] like I said, there's the trim and -- . >> Margaret Barker: Mm-hmm. >> Paul Baicich: Another chickadee. >> Margaret Barker: Mm-hmm. >> Paul Baicich: Wish I could tell what seed they were using. >> Margaret Barker: Yeah. >> Paul Baicich: It's unclear. >> Margaret Barker: Hard to see. >> Paul Baicich: There doesn't seem to be any sunflower in there. Probably some hemp, folks. Coconut, here they're making, here they're sawing the coconut at both ends. And they're grinding up the beef fat. >> Margaret Barker: Looks like a hard job. >> Paul Baicich: At least they're not tasting it. Then they're going to mix it with seed. >> Margaret Barker: Suet and ground peanuts. >> Paul Baicich: They mix, stuffing it there. And hanging it up in the snow. >> Margaret Barker: Yes. This is the image we used in our book. Ta-da. >> Paul Baicich: And it's a red breasted nuthatch. >> Margaret Barker: Mm-hmm. >> Paul Baicich: Coming. The size of the hull regulates the quality of the guest. And for some reason they tossed in this: People throwing in -- . >> Margaret Barker: Doesn't fit in. Maybe it's the benefactors. ^M00:48:14 [ Laughter ] ^M00:48:15 >> Paul Baicich: They made this all possible. And -- . ^M00:48:20 ^M00:48:22 This was very common to establish bird feeding stations, community stations and run by communities and Boy Scouts in the woods or in the village squares, particularly in the New England. We guess that this may have been from upstate New York. >> Margaret Barker: Now they're going to create a snow feeder. Keep your eyes open for some boys who fight with swords in here. >> Paul Baicich: They're packing down the snow so the seed doesn't disappear into the -- . And here we come -- . >> Margaret Barker: Juncos. >> Paul Baicich: More juncos, yep. >> Margaret Barker: And this is close to the end. Juncos look fed and the film just kind of ends. [Laughs]. >> Paul Baicich: As does our talk. Thank you very much. ^M00:49:16 [ Applause ] ^M00:49:19 >> Angel Vu: Thank you so much, Margaret and Paul. That was fascinating. And now we're going to open the floor up for any questions. >> Margaret Barker: Great. >> Paul Baicich: Yes. >> I vaguely recall, maybe 30 years ago, reading that the spread of feeding had some effect on, for example, northern cardinals, the winter range as far as the north [inaudible]. Are there other dramatic effects like that, the distribution of animals? >> Paul Baicich: Well, probably feeder-wise, it's probably not dependent on but it probably helps. I would include -- cardinals would be among the first which would have been starting over a hundred years ago when they started moving north. But other southern birds that have moved north and have been helped by feeders have been tufted titmouse, red bellied woodpecker, and probably Carolina wren in so far as that they come to suet. And the Carolina wrens are an example of blizzard threatened birds. In New England when it's a tough, tough, tough winter the Carolina wrens, having just reached, "just" reached New England maybe in the 1980's and 90's, they're hammered back when in very difficult winters and it may take a few years or half a decade for them to recover. So in that case, you know, a feeding station might be important for your Carolina wrens if you live in Vermont or Maine. But otherwise I don't think there's much that we can attribute in terms of northern spread having to do with feeders. I think there is a western spread when we're dealing with house finches. And I think house finches have really been accelerated and accommodated by feeding stations as they've moved west. Margaret, do you have anything to add there? >> Margaret Barker: Sounds good. I was going to mention Carolina wren as really a dramatic example. >> Paul Baicich: Yeah. Anyone else? Yes. >> I was amused to see "Feed the Birds Now" had been produced by the National Cartridge. I mean, I always think of cartridges and guns. So I wondered if indeed they were promoting feeding the birds so they could shoot the birds [inaudible]. >> Paul Baicich: Yeah. Federal Cartridge Corporation was for many, many years extremely active in conservation, perhaps mainly due toward their rural base, their owners, the family that owned the company and that still owns the company I believe. I'd have to ask Carrol that. And their interest in game birds, mainly that game birds be they grouse, or quail, or pheasant would survive through the winter if you fed. They had a whole series of these PSA's, public service announcements, as ads. They even had them, wisely enough and this was very admirable, they had them not to shoot the hawks that visit your chicken yard which was quite remarkable. Indeed the arms and ammo companies in 1911 were instrumental in forming the Wildlife Management Institute which was deeply committed and has been deeply committed to conservation from that avenue. And so it's very interesting. It's a good question. >> Margaret Barker: And there was community bird feeding going on so groups of people would get together and go out and feed the birds, especially in heavy snows. >> Paul Baicich: And a lot of that during the Depression was scratch, not necessarily quality seeds, but seed that was swept up at the mill, on the floor, and put into bags, and first given away to farmers and community people to spread at community feeders or in their backyards. Later on they said, "Hey, you know, we could start charging ten cents or a nickel a bag for these big bags." And that's what they did and that's part of the transition into this bird feeding. Yes. >> Is there anything you can do for ground cover to ensure that worms and other insects are available [inaudible]. >> Margaret Barker: Yes. We have a lot of insectivorous birds around right now of course and the best thing that people can do is to plant for birds. And even if you just have, you know, some food plants, for example, when I go out of town I don't worry about my hummingbirds because I have coral honeysuckle and that's there for the hummingbirds. And the health of insects is going to increase and therefore be available to birds if you keep nice native plants around and don't use pesticides. >> Paul Baicich: I highly recommend Doug Tallamy's book, "Bringing Nature Home." It's a fabulous book on the connection between native plants and native insects, and concomitantly, connected to birds. I will tell you privately I have a phobia against insects but I read and thoroughly enjoyed the book. And it's an extremely important, an extremely important book. Doug Tallamy, "Bringing Nature Home." It's about the backyard. >> Margaret Barker: But one thought is to think of a plant as a kind of bird feeder. >> Paul Baicich: Indeed. And cover is good, is important, not only in spring and summer when it's blossoming, and when it's full of insects and worms underneath, but also in terms of wintertime to serve as literally cover for birds, protection from wind, snow, and predators, too. Any other questions before we -- yes, go ahead. >> There was, you showed a device meant to discourage English sparrows. Are the same little brown sparrows that we have everywhere? >> Paul Baicich: Yes. The English sparrows are now called house sparrows, were introduced to Brooklyn, New York, 1850, 1852, I think two or three releases. And it was thought that they would eat gypsy moths and gypsy moth worms. It didn't work. They spread all over the country. They became bullies to other birds and became undesirable. This was a device not to discourage, you wisely used the word, or politically correct to use the word discourage. This was a device to capture so you could dispose of these birds. Curiously they have been declining over the last, house sparrows have been declining over the last 30, 40 years. And that's particularly because of the decline of the horse. In urban areas, in cities house sparrows flourished because of spilled grain and feeding horses, oats in particular. Also they would recycle the manure that wasn't fully, necessarily digested by the horse on city streets. House sparrows would do very well. They don't do that well now. They may be in some urban areas including Washington, D.C., and maybe your backyard but they are highly reduced. Margaret, did you get the results from -- ? >> Margaret Barker: Also in Europe they're declining and it's remarkable because a lot of people who put up birdhouses don't like house sparrows a lot. They can be very aggressive, especially toward bluebirds. And, but you can go online and see people in England weeping about the decline in house sparrow populations. House sparrows are not a protected bird in this country. They're not protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. >> Paul Baicich: They're not native. They're not native just like starlings are not native birds. They're not protected. So they are disposed of and dispatched accordingly many places. Looks like we've run out of time. It's been a delight to be with you and an honor to be here. Thank you. >> Margaret Barker: Very much. ^M00:57:26 [ Applause ] ^M00:57:28 >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov. ^E00:57:36