Colour preferences of UK garden birds at supplementary seed feeders

Abstract

Supplementary feeding of garden birds generally has benefits for both bird populations and human wellbeing. Birds have excellent colour vision, and show preferences for food items of particular colours, but research into colour preferences associated with artificial feeders is limited to hummingbirds. Here, we investigated the colour preferences of common UK garden birds foraging at seed-dispensing artificial feeders containing identical food. We presented birds simultaneously with an array of eight differently coloured feeders, and recorded the number of visits made to each colour over 370 30-minute observation periods in the winter of 2014/15. In addition, we surveyed visitors to a garden centre and science festival to determine the colour preferences of likely purchasers of seed feeders. Our results suggest that silver and green feeders were visited by higher numbers of individuals of several common garden bird species, while red and yellow feeders received fewer visits. In contrast, people preferred red, yellow, blue and green feeders. We suggest that green feeders may be simultaneously marketable and attractive to foraging birds.

Fig 1. Analysis of feeder colour.

(A) RG and BY ratios, and (B) luminance for the 8 different feeder colours.

Fig 2. Bird colour preferences.

Mean numbers of visits per observation period to feeders of each colour, for (A) all species combined, (B) Blue tit Cyanistes caeruleus (C) Great tit Parus major (D) Coal tit Periparus ater (E) House sparrow Passer domesticus and (F) Robin Erithacus rubecula. Error bars represent +/- 1 S.E.

Fig 3. Human colour preferences.

(A) Mean number of tokens placed into the container corresponding to each coloured feeder by potential purchasers of bird feeders. (B) The combined preferences of potential purchasers (x axis) and visits by all birds (y axis) for each colour feeder. Error bars represent +/- 1 S.E.