Ms. Conca's third grade class at Church Street School in White Plains, New York had a "Holiday For The Birds" celebration again this year. This year we strung popcorn and cranberries for the whole day!!!! Many parents came to help us.

American Goldfinch

Goldfinch

Introduction

My experiment is designed to find out if there is a time of day when birds like to eat. I will measure the number of birds at the feeder at different times of the day. By graphing the information I will be able to find out if there is a time of day when birds prefer to eat. I will also be recording the weather conditions to see if these make a difference in the number of birds visiting the feeder.

If I were to guess what time birds liked to eat most, I would say the morning since they do not eat all night and they wake up hungry.

Methods and Materials

I will measure bird use of the feeder by watching the feeder for ten minutes each hour and counting the number of times that birds visit the feeder. For example, I will start counting at 8:00 AM and stop counting at 8:10 AM. I will count again from 9:00 AM to 9:10 AM and again every hour until 5:10 PM. By counting for ten minutes every hour I will get a good sampling of bird activity throughout the day.

I will need birdseed in a feeder, paper, pencil, a timer or clock, a thermometer, and graph paper. I can watch the feeder in my back yard from my kitchen window so I don’t scare the birds away. Since some birdseed spills down on the ground, I will also count the birds that land on the ground under the feeder. I am going to count for six days. After the counts are collected, I will graph the results and see what time of day the birds visit the feeder the most. I will also show the weather conditions on the graph in case these are affecting bird activity. If it is cold or snowing, the birds may not come out to eat.

Figure 1. Day One
Weather conditions: cold with some snow. Average temperature 30° F.

Figure 2. Day Two
Weather conditions: cold and cloudy. Average temperature 30° F.

Note: y-axis goes up to 20 on this graph

Day Three
Weather conditions: big snow. Average temperature 19° F.

No birds seen.

Day Four
Weather conditions: big snow. Average temperature 21° F.

No birds seen.

Figure 3. Day Five
Weather conditions: sunny and clear. Average temperature 32° F.

Day Six
Weather conditions: partly cloudy. Average temperature 41° F.

No birds seen.

Analysis

The time of day did not seem to effect my bird count. On two days there were no birds visiting the feeder at any time of day. On the other days, when birds did come, there was not a definite pattern related to the time of day. What did seem to matter was the weather condition. When it was snowing heavily the birds did not come to feed at all. They also did not come when it was very cold. There was one counting session when a lot of birds (19) came all at once in a flock. I only saw this flock once during my counting times. I do not know why this flock came at the time it did, as it only happened once and there was no pattern I could figure out.

Discussion

This experiment was designed to answer the question: Do birds have certain times of the day that they prefer to eat? The data that I collected did not show a relationship between the time of day and the number of birds feeding at the bird feeder. I only collected six days worth of data and I think this was not enough. Maybe if more days of data were collected there would be a clear pattern and an answer to my questions.

What was clear to me through my observations was that the weather did make a big difference in the number of birds at the feeder. When it was snowing heavily there were no birds at all for the day. When the weather was cold the number of birds at the feeder was reduced.

These results were different from what I expected. I thought that there would be more birds to count. I also thought that there would be a definite time of day that birds preferred to eat. Just like people eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at certain times, I thought birds would have a time of day to eat.

I think that to really answer my questions this study should be done for a long period of time over the summer. There are more birds in this area during the summer months. This would increase the chances of birds coming to the feeder, and of finding a feeding pattern.