Photography

Here’s How Much Food Three Different Birds Need to Eat Daily

From hawks to hummingbirds, avians have some enormous appetites.
By BirdNote
Published November 19, 2018

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Transcript:

This is BirdNote.

There used to be a saying about somebody who doesn鈥檛 eat much 鈥 鈥渟he eats like a bird.鈥 Just a little of this and a smidgen of that. But how much does a bird typically eat? And how much would you have to eat to match it? Well, depends on the bird. 

As a rule of thumb, the smaller the bird, the more food it needs relative to its weight. A Cooper鈥檚 Hawk, a medium-sized bird that hunts other birds, eats around 12 percent of its weight per day. For you, if you weigh 鈥 say 鈥 150 pounds, that鈥檚 18 pounds of chow 鈥 roughly six extra-large pizzas.

That perky little chickadee flitting back and forth for sunflower seeds from your feeder eats the equivalent of 35 percent of its weight. You, as a 150-pound chickadee, will be munching 600 granola bars a day.

And a tiny hummingbird? It drinks about 100 percent of its body weight per day. That means you鈥檒l be sipping 17陆 gallons of milk. Prefer wine or beer? 18 gallons.

If it鈥檚 warm outside, you can probably get by on a bit less. But if it鈥檚 cold, you鈥檒l need more. So you鈥檇 best stock up.

For BirdNote, I鈥檓 Mary McCann.

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Credits:

Call of the Pine Siskin provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. [44845] recorded by G.A. Keller, [140257] recorded by Gerrit Vyn, and [117803] recorded by S.R. Pantle. 

BirdNote鈥檚 theme music was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.

Producer: John Kessler

Executive Producer: Sallie Bodie

漏 2016 Tune In to Nature.org  November 2018  Narrator: Mary McCann