Most people think they decide how, when, and why they feed birds.But what if it’s actually the animals, wanted and unwanted, making those decisions for us?
In this episode, we unpack a fascinating national-scale study from Finland that analyzed 15,088 detailed answers from 9,473 people about why they changed their bird-feeding habits. The patterns were striking:
* Rats were the #1 reason people stopped feeding (
* Wanted birds like waxwings, thrushes, and tits motivated people to feed more.
* Magpies, squirrels, deer, and neighborhood cats could trigger either more feeding or total shutdown, depending on the context.
* And surprisingly, 86% of all reasons for change were about people’s relationships with other species, not money, time, or convenience (page 3, Table 1).
This episode reveals how feeding birds is not a simple one-way human action—it’s a dynamic negotiation among humans, birds, mammals, predators, pets, and neighborhood norms.
You’ll never look at your window bird feeder the same way again.
