Bird Feeding

Bird Feeding Earl Plato

This is a North American centred article. What was happening in Europe in he 1800’s I did not research. Here in America Henry David Thoreau around 1845 recorded some of his activities at Walden Pond in Massachusetts. I was at Walden Pond in 1954 before the building boom began. I’ve returned twice and now you can not recognize the place and his rustic cabin because of the surrounding build up. I have a Thoreau book and we read that over 150 years ago Thoreau was offering corn and bread crumbs to the birds at Walden Pond. He was feeding the birds at his beautiful, rustic setting. Read Walden Pond if you haven’t already. This philosopher loved nature and wanted to help the local songbirds. He is the first recorded bird feeder as far as I know. There were no handmade feeders as we know. Thoreau’s fellow naturalist and author John Burroughs toward the end of the 1800’s tells of feeding birds regularly at his woodland cabin. Again it seems a matter of scattering seeds and crumbs on the ground.
By 1910 we rad that there were many references to bird feeding, including two books on bird feeding: Methods of Attracting Birds, by Gilbert H. Trafton and Wild Bird Guests (1915) by Ernest H. Baynes. Three more informative books were also written at this time. Interest was growing. We learn that food was often offered in crude but practical homemade feeders. Less scattering of seed on the ground.
There is even a reference to a young Californian woman in the early 1900’s while convalescing from an illness sprinkled some sugar water on some flowers. Soon she had attracted hummingbirds. We learn that shortly after a Caroline Soule of Brookline, Massachusetts provided hummingbirds with the first sugar-water feeder. Philanthropist B.F. Tucker began in 1926 to sell hummingbird feeders. They sold well. Another feeder that became a commercial success was invented in 1930. You know it well. I have had two of them up. Peter Kalham gave us the first modern tubular hanging feeder. John Dennis says, These were the humble beginnings of a hobby that is now among the most popular in North America. Feed the songbirds but take note: Once you start be faithful, don’t stop!