Ornithologist assures bread is completely fine for birds

You can and even should feed bread to birds in winter, says Professor Ilgizar Rakhimov.

The scientist dispels the widespread urban myth about dangers of bread, “We don’t know a single case of birds dying from bread feed. What’s this absurd claim that you shouldn’t give them bread? For birds feeding on seeds, such as sparrows or pigeons, bread is a perfectly normal product. Not a single duck living our lakes hasn’t died of gagging while consuming bread. Where does this myth even come from?”

This winter, says Rakhimov, started with very warm days and then had several huge bouts on snowfall. That’s why the city had simultaneous large groups of berry-eating birds, such as waxwings, thrushes and bullfinches, “Sizable groups just kept flying from one tree to another searching for rowanberry – which, thankfully, is plentiful this year. It was interesting to follow their interactions – when thrushes, who are very noisy and brash, flew towards a certain tree, this immediately prompted bullfinches, who are definitely the most bashful of the three species, to get away. However, I haven’t seen heated scuffles.”

Some birds have already left for greener pastures, notes Rakhimov, “Bullfinches have an interesting tactics in winter – they peck on seeds of berries, and the flesh falls on the ground and gets eventually covered by snow. When the snow starts melting in spring, the bullfinches return and pick on that flesh. So that’s basically their storage.”

A few weeks ago Rakhimov saw a rough-legged buzzard (of the hawk family), “This large carnivorous bird overwinters on our territory. And that was a first such sighting for me in twenty years.”