How They Droll: Bird-Feeding Professionals
How They Droll: Bird-Feeding Professionals
Artists, photographers, scientists, researchers, and many other professionals use Droll Yankees products in their work. Whether the goal is to add beauty to the world through art or photography, or to promote our understanding of birds and their environment, professionals choose Droll Yankees feeders because of their quality construction, innovative designs, and Lifetime Warranty. We proudly support these folks here.
University of Illinois - Urbana/Champaign
Dr. James Miller and Jason Fischer, PhD candidate
Have you ever wondered if the birds you see at your feeder are the same as the ones from yesterday, or the day before? In the past, scientists have studied how birds use food resources by putting colored bands on the legs of birds so they could identify individuals, but this required researchers to spend long hours watching feeders.
So in 2010, Droll Yankees was proud to support the research efforts of Dr. James Miller and his student Jason Fischer, a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois - Urbana/Champaign. We donated 20 bird feeders and feeder trays to support their research on the impacts of bird feeding and urbanization on avian populations. Through this study, Dr. Miller and Jason hope to learn more about the foraging behavior of individual birds, as well as the importance of bird feeders in their daily lives. After having captured and banded 1,634 birds – and then releasing them - Jason decided that banding alone was not going to be as effective as he needed to be able to measure visitations and foraging behavior. So he and Dr. Miller decided to introduce radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to the study. Jason retrofitted our feeders with RFID readers, and attached RFID tags (also known as PIT tags) to the bands of the birds that come to the feeders. Each time a tagged bird lands on the feeder, its identity and the time of its visit is recorded.
As of June, 2012, Jason had attached RFID tags to over 1,000 birds, and will continue gathering information on them through 2013. With this technology, we can, according to Jason, “learn how often different individuals come to particular feeders, how long the average bird coming to a feeder lives, and how a bird's condition affects how often it comes to bird feeders. With these findings we hope to gain a more complete picture of the role that bird feeders play in the lives of the birds that visit them.”
Carol Decker
Carol Decker Wildlife Art Studio, Branchville, NJ
www.caroldeckerwildlifeartstudio.net
Model shown: WH-3
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