Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!dali.cs.montana.edu!milton!jespah
From: jespah@milton.u.washington.edu (Kathleen Hunt)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: Handfeeding Wild Birds
Message-ID: <11679@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 26 Nov 90 06:35:59 GMT
Distribution: rec.birds
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 50

From: stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com (Dick St.Peters)

*Since chickadees seem to be much in the news, what (if any) other bird
*species, particularly Eastern US species, can be hand fed in the wild
*by a patient person?

Seems to me that if you are *really* patient, there are very often a 
few individual birds that are calm enough to take to handfeeding, even
of often shy species.

There's a female red-winged blackbird at the U.W. boathouse who will
hop onto your hand and grab some food, but only if you're a member of
the rowing club.  I don't know if you'd consider this "the wild", though.
She is technically a wild bird.  She occasionally wanders right into the
boathouse and looks around at the people panting and puffing on the rowing
machines, and then she apparently gets bored and wanders out again.

Crows, of course, are great scavengers, and last week a Common Crow
(Northwestern) took a Tater Tot from my hand.  Hardly the best food, but
it seemed pleased.

One of the grad students here studied scrub jays for a couple years.  He
said one of the jays got so tame it would hop on to his hand and take 
food that he was holding in his *teeth*.  He has a photo of this same bird,
standing on his hand, with its whole head and half its body inside this
guy's *mouth*, where he had some food for it.  Weird guy.  Great photo.

One of the profs at U.Wisconsin, Jack Hailman, studies scrub jays and 
chickadees.  He mentioned to me last year that he was thinking of doing
a study on "tameness", since he has noticed that even in the wildest
areas, some jays and chickadees seem to be pretty much tame already, while
others remain wary no matter how long you coax them.  He was wondering if
this is partially genetic.  I don't know if he's going ahead with this or
not.

I also read in Birdwatcher's Digest about .... I forget what kind of owl....
Someone in Canada somewhere had gotten very familiar with a local owl,
and would go out in the woods at night and hold up a dead mouse or bit of
meat, and the owl would swoop down and grab it.

Then, of course, there are all the gulls, ducks, & pigeons.  What I love doing 
is standing on a beach with the wind blowing on my back, and a whole flock
of ring-billed gulls hovering in front of me (since they have a headwind),
while I toss bread or whatnot into the wind.  They *always* catch it!  They
are so precise!  They just swoop a little bit and gulp it down.  Plus it
is such fun to have flying birds hovering there at my fingertips.  Plus I
really like ring-bills -- they have such pretty voices and are so elegant-
looking compared to Herring Gulls....

Jespah