Willa

I See You...
If you cover a bird feeder with mirrors will more or less birds come to that feeder because they see themselves? Will the birds think that they see themselves? Or another bird? does it depend on the number of mirrors on the feeder to scare the birds?

__Hypothesis:__ My hypothesis is that the birds won't go to the mirrored feeder as much because they see their refection, and think that there is another bird there. Mostly if they are very territorial birds they will peck at the mirrors. They also might get angry at the bird in the mirror.

Some birds can understand that there isn't another bird when they look in the mirror. Magpies are one of those birds. They know, when they look at their image, that the other bird is them. Some birds are very territorial like Mockingbirds, Cardinals and Indigo Buntings. Many people have found them pecking at their reflection on their car mirrors because they think that their reflction is another bird. Another bird that is very territorial is the Cuckoo bird. The mother bird will go to some random nest with eggs in it. She will lay her egg and leave the nest and go to another and do the same thing. When the Mother owning the nest comes back she will hatch the eggs including the Cuckoo egg. Once all the eggs have hatched the baby Cuckoo will kick all the other baby birds out of the nest and claim it as theirs own. This shows that they are very territorial birds and will get angry if another bird is in/on their "property".

__Procedure__ To start I will hang my bird feeders close to each other. Then I will buy a ton of small mirrors. Then I will use putty to attach the mirrors so that when the birds sit on a feeder they see themselves in the mirrors. I will put 5 cups of the same bird seed in each feeder at 7:30am. Then the next morning I will take out the bird seed from each feeder and measure how many cups were left in each feeder. After measuring how much food was left I will refill the feeders back to five cups. I will do this procedure for 5 days.

__Supplies__ To do this experiment you need:
 * 2 bird feeders
 * bird food (the same kind)
 * small mirrors
 * stick on putty
 * measuring cup

__Things That Could Happen__
 * the feeders are slightly diffrent, and that could change the result of my experiment.
 * if one of the birds gets angry at its refection, and pecks off the mirror
 * squirrels might eat the bird seed

__Results__ This table show how much food was eaten over the course of 5 days. On day one the measurements were the same. The second day the feeder with mirrors got twice as much eaten then the feeder without mirrors. On the third day of my experiment the birds had eaten only a quarter more feed from the on with mirrors. The forth day way more was eaten from the feeder without mirrors than the feeder with mirrors. And on the final day of my experiment it was the same results as the day before. The total food eaten was 3 3/4 cups out of 25 cups for the one with mirrors. And the feeder without mirrors was at 4 cups were eaten out of 25 cups.

It seemed that the birds didn't care that there were mirrors on the feed.

a cup ||< 1/2 a cup ||< 1 cup ||< 1 cup || 4 cups ||
 * <  ||< Day 1 ||< Day 2 ||< Day 3 ||< Day 4 ||< Day 5 || Total ||
 * < Mirrors ||< 1 cup ||< 1 cup ||< 3/4 of a cup ||< 1/4 of a cup ||< 1/4 of a cup || 3 3/4 cups ||
 * < No Mirrors ||< 1 cup ||< 1/2

__Websites__ http://www.gardengrapevine.com/TerritorialBirds.html http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071121162602AAohYC0