The amount of food my garden birds are consuming is increasing daily. I have just spent another £20 ($32) on sunflower seeds and I will be lucky if they last a week. The Goldfinches in particular love this food source and I often count 15 or more of this species at the feeders. Their comings and goings and occasional skirmishes are entertaining but hide the fact that they are in deadly earnest and sometimes have serious outcomes.
Our garden visitors are invariably in competition. The food we leave out is still a limited resource. If a bird is displaced from a feeder, an event which is commonplace in my garden and technically known as a "supplanting attack", it can appear to be a minor incident. The juveniles are often displaced by adult birds. If this happens repeatedly a bird could lose body condition little by little and be vulnerable to a change to colder weather. This is becoming of increasing concern given the forecast that we could be in for the coldest winter for 100 years.
This winter then it will be more important to spice up our watching to appreciate just how important aggression is. Bird feeders seethe with tension and it won't take long to spot it. I am seeing it already. Threatening birds stoop forward, head down (like a charging bull) with the bill open. The threatened bird usually simply flies off. It might also offer an appeasement posture, as finches do, which involves fluffing up the plumage. I have also witnessed the unusual appeasement ritual where the subordinate brings food to a dominant bird and feeds it beak to beak. I saw this only this morning.
Other inherently aggressive signals are more subtle. Watch Blackbirds and Woodpigeons when they land. They often lift the tail up and let it down slowly, both acts drawing attention to the individual.
Our garden birds are wild animals in every sense. Remember that when you top up your feeders. and do keep them replenished during the harsh winter anticipated...
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