A good knowledge of the foods that birds eat can help us bring them closer to ourselves. Birds help add life to the trees in your backyard, put some natural sounds in your environment, and just make you feel close to nature. Different types of birds eat different types of food.
If you can figure out what types of foods the birds eat instead, you may be able to use these foods to get them closer to your spot. These are the types of birds according to the food they eat:
Avivores
Birdworms are simply birds of prey; they eat other birds to live. These birds, which include hawks, hawks, and ravens, are characterized by strong wings, legs, and claws. They are agile fliers that chase the smallest birds and grab the smallest ones with their claws.
Carnivores
These are raptors. They love to eat meat, but they do not eat other birds. Most of their diets include rodents, small mammals, fish, snakes, and frogs. Carnivorous birds include eagles, owls, hawks, and large hawks.
Fruitarian
Frugivores are the typical fruit eaters that we often see in the forest or near our farms. These sweet-colored avian friends are our feathered planters. They work to spread the seeds of the plants throughout the forest. These birds, which include orioles, robins, bananaquits, parrots, and blue jays love apples, berries, plums, raisins, bananas, and other fruits. By the way, some bats eat fruit, but they are not birds; they are mammals.
Granivores
Granivores are birds that make cereals as their main food. Many birds belong to this category. They are the ones that are easy to attract in our backyards, if only we knew what to attract them with. Examples of seed eaters include pigeons, sparrows, finches, parakeets, cardinals, and pigeons.
Insectivores
Insectivorous birds also depend on meat for their diet, but this time, they feed on insects. Most insectivores are small, but these birds are very helpful to farmers and gardeners. They help control the population of pests that destroy plants. These avian friends of ours include phoebes, bluebirds, warblers, woodpeckers, and warbling sparrows. Many birds that are not naturally insectivorous hunt insects to feed their young.
It is unfortunate that when farmers spray their plants with insecticides, they also destroy the birds that eat the dead insects. It’s one of the main reasons why insect-eating birds are disappearing today.
Mollusks
Mollusks are shorebirds that eat snails, oysters, and slugs. Many molluscivores converge on the seashore at low tide to hunt for clams and oysters. Other birds of this type prefer to stay in the swamps to find their favorite food.
Nectivores
These birds feed on the nectar of flowers. They help in the cross pollination of flowers so that they develop and produce seeds. This is a symbiotic relationship that allows plants and birds to thrive together. Some of the better known carnivores include honeysuits, hummingbirds, honeys, sunbirds, and spider hunters.
Ophiophagous birds
Snake birds are feathered creatures that eat snakes. There are only a few species of birds that include snakes as part of their main diet. These include the secretary bird, snake eagles, and some hawks and herons.
Palynivores
Palynivores are pollen-eating birds. There are not many birds that are strictly pollen eaters. But many insectivores and carnivores consume pollen when looking for food.
Piscivores
Piscivores are birds that dive or dive into water to catch fish with their specialized beaks or strong claws. Some examples of piscivores include kingfishers, ospreys, seagulls, and cormorants.
