Ruud Kleinpaste: The science of training birds

This is the time of the year when my training sessions begin in all speed: teaching silvereyes and some other birds to come and visit our garden. After all, today’s the start of winter! 

It’s not just about giving these lovely birds some well-deserved food for winter (although that helps!), it’s a simple way to get them to know where we live!  

By regularly feeding these insectivores, they will be imprinted to come back in spring and summer, and that helps an entomologist (and his grandson) to identify the various individuals during the months of the year.  

We feed these birds a number of yummy meals: Protein rich meat balls from the Mad Butcher, Lard Blocks, Nectar bottles, Cut-open fruit, etc. 

Hundreds of them will visit our “kitchen”, and we know they will come back in spring and summer.  

Why? Simply because this is where they get some great food, especially when it’s wintertime, but also in summertime, when our plants are damaged by scale insects and mealy bugs, whitefly and caterpillars, beetles and psyllids. Other great food are the chrysalises of moths and herbivorous wasps; but to be frank, their most effective pest control deals with aphids and the sap-sucking “scales and mealies”  

I have seen these birds devouring 80% of the scale insects on my citrus bush in the garden. It was a relentless exercise by the small flock that came back twice a day to lift the tiny insects off the stems.  

Other great birds in winter, spring, and summer are tui and bellbirds.  

They too love to gobble the sugar water snacks. When you have flowers in the garden, these two natives will likely pollinate your plants!  

Training these birds in winter has a second beneficial outcome:  

The hundreds of silvereyes, finches, starlings and other garden visitors can be caught in my garden with mist nets; the next step then is to give them a metal ring with individual numbers.   

It allows some of my colleagues to come over to my place and become skilled at “catching and banding” all sorts of birds. This will be useful for future Science Projects in Ornithology.  

Ha! Even my 12 year old grandson keeps an eye on the silvereyes that he banded – it’s wonderful to see these young kids having a go and learning about Nature in quite a different way.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from News Talks at.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Bow Man in the Gardener's Rude Climb passes counting down
to an important date this afternoon two forty one pm.
I was right, rude, that is when we are officially
in winter.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
You're absolutely right? Do you always tell me the same thing?
I love it? The only thing that changes the excell
time of the day.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
A yes, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true.
I wonder what you're saying, manh yeah, yeah, no, that
makes that makes total scense. So what are you doing
in your garden to prepare.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Well at the moment, I'm training birds, I'm getting I'm
feeding birds in our garden to get back to our
garden on a regular basis. That really is the idea.
And so what I'm doing, for instance, is getting a
lot of silver ice coming with in our garden with
light blocks and things like that, meatballs, neckar bottles and

(01:02):
cut open fruit that July sort of hangs up and
puts everywhere. And in no time you have like sixty
or so of these birds coming on a regular basis
to your garden. And that is nice, but it also
means that they start to understand that this is the
place where you get food day night, winter, summer. And
that's what it's about. Because I found out that these

(01:25):
little silver ice they are absolutely brilliant at going in
the summertime into my roses and into my fruit, and
they basically catch all the insects that do damage.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Oh good, So okay, I thought you were going to
say they destroyed your roses or they ate your fruit,
but actually they're helping.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Yeah, they helping. They are natural pest controllers, these guys,
mealy bugs and scale insects, a fits, all these things,
and that means that I don't have to spray them
or do anything about them.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah, okay, So here's my dilemma because obviously I've had
my I've had my bird feeder out for some time now,
and I basically just got a little nick to feeder.
I put some sugar water in the air. The silver
rides go absolutely crazy over it. They love it, love it.
But I reckon they are observably quite pudgy. And now,
of course I've had to go away for a couple
of weeks, and so I'm a little bit I've been

(02:17):
trying to wean them off things quite so much. So
I've actually been been, you know, going down from an
every day filling to every two days to every three days,
just so they're not one hundred percent dependent on my
feet or is that an issue.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
It's not an issue. Check because they will know six
months later where you live.

Speaker 4 (02:35):
Ah right, okay, so they will always come and check,
and once they found something that is of really good food,
they'll go and they get the whole family across and
it's simply as that.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
So that's how that works. At the same time, of course,
I put misnets up for catching the birds with Eduy
and my twelve year old grandson and we banned them.
So yesterday we did something like or twenty twenty five,
twenty six birds not individually banned, so we know who's surprised,
and yeah, yeah, we see those also, this is our way.

(03:08):
I know. We see the same birds back again in
spring and summer when we needed for their best control duties.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Oh how good, Hey, it's funny you're doing this at
this time of year. I'm probably telling you something you
already know, Ruber. Maybe I can teach you something for
a change. So do you know what the Mardi word for?
Silver ryers.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
Yeah, Towho.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Yeah, Toho and Tohoe. And there's just a one letter
difference with this time of year. Matadiki is of course
to to Ho Maudi the Mardi Newe. Yeah, and you
get you're serving the Toehoe at Toho yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yeah. And the reason they're the toe Ho because they
suddenly arrived in eighteen thirty when they flew across from Australia.
This is a brand new import if you like, it's
only one hundred and sixty years old. It's amazing.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Yeah, we want to make them feel as welcome as possible.
Thank you sir. Yeah, I love having the bird feed
around at this time of year. We'll catch you in
very soon. Rude climb pass in the garden.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
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