Bird feeding, especially feeding birds in the winter in the global north, is a popular activity for many people. So popular in fact that it is a multimillion dollar industry!
Research is only now beginning to scratch the surface of the reasons behind why people like to feed birds. Many aspects of feeding are still under explored and hence little understood.
We used two long-term monitoring datasets and an online questionnaire to explore the provisioner's perspective in feeding birds.
Exploring why people change how they feed birds we found that most people in Finland wanted to feed birds but the challenges to engaging in the activity varied with urbanity and being in different parts of Finland. For example, rats were the main reason to stop provisioning food to birds in Southern urban parts of Finland.