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Study if birds prefer one type of food over another

Life Sciences science projects

Suitable For

Grade 2

Difficulty

2

Time Required

 <24 Hours

Supervision

Advised

What’s it about?

Birds can be very fussy eaters. As you might have noticed, birds also seem to be looking for a free meal, but in fact they are quite picky and are constantly looking for their favourite food to eat! See if the birds in your neighbourhood have food preferences with this science experiment:

Topics covered

Suet

What will I need?

  • 4x PLASTIC PLATES
  • KITCHEN SCALE
  • PEANUT BUTTER
  • SUNFLOWER SEEDS
  • CANARY SEEDS
  • SUET

Procedure (Method)

Birds can be very fussy eaters. As you might have noticed, birds also seem to be looking for a free meal, but in fact they are quite picky and are constantly looking for their favourite food to eat! See if the birds in your neighbourhood have food preferences with this science experiment:

  1. Use a kitchen scale to weigh off 50g of each type of bird food mentioned above. Place each type of food on a different plate and place all the plates together somewhere outside where it can be observed from a distance undetected.
  2. Observe the birds and try and see which of the types of food are preferred by which type of bird. Also, keep track of any environmental factors that might influence the feeding such as noises or even a prowling cat that might scare the birds away.
  3. After a few hours retrieve the plates of food and weigh each portion of remaining food to see which of the food they prefer.

How does it work?

All of the food provided in this science experiment is generally liked by most wild bird species. For the most part, wild birds are picky about their food because they usually prefer more ‘protein-rich’ food that will help them to survive during the winter time when food is scarce.

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