Safe Bird Feeding Practices
Kawartha Wildlife Centre
One of our most popular birds, Northern Cardinals brighten our days with color and clear (and loud!) whistled song throughout southeastern Canada. During the breeding season, males will sing and attack to defend territory against intruding competitors (and sometimes even their own reflection in windows and mirrors!). A regular visitor to urban and rural backyards, Cardinals eat seeds, berries, insects as well as spiders, centipedes, and snails.
As food sources contract in winter, Cardinals and other seed-eating birds gravitate to bird feeders as an easily available source of energy. If you have a bird feeder that you maintain during the winter, please take the steps to ensure that it is safe and clean for birds to use. Unfortunately, bird feeder-related disease transmission is one of the leading causes of illness and death for birds in Ontario.
Prevention is the key to avoiding the spread of diseases at bird feeders. Ensure your bird feeders are made of hard plastic or metal, both being easy to keep clean. Platform feeders are discouraged as birds defecate where they eat and avoid wood-based bird feeders as they cannot be fully cleaned/disinfected.
Each week, please take feeders down, clean the debris from them with hot soapy water, then soak in a bleach solution for at least ten minutes which will remove any disease agents. Keep your eyes open for sick birds (which usually present as overly fluffy and relatively immobile). If there are sick or dead birds found in your yard or reported in the surrounding area, bird feeders should be removed and bird feeding should stop for at least 1-3 weeks to prevent further congregation and spread. For more information about bird feeders please see Bird Friendly Peterborough’s website: https://www.birdfriendlypeterborough.ca/bird-feeders. Small actions will help keep our feathered friends safe this winter!
If you find a bird in distress this winter, please contact your local Wildlife Rehabilitator for guidance, such as Kawartha Wildlife Centre. KWC is volunteer-run wildlife rehabilitation centre located in Peterborough County in the heart of the Kawarthas. As a charity relying solely on community support and receiving no government funding for care of wildlife, we are in urgent need of financial support to support our patient care and treatments.
To support wildlife in need, please consider making a donation this season:
