Birds Behavior when Given the Choice of Black Oil or Striped Sunflower Seeds. By Marcus Bond Russano Center for Teaching and Learning Glenn Powers

Transcription

1 Birds Behavior when Given the Choice of Black Oil or Striped Sunflower Seeds By Marcus Bond Russano Center for Teaching and Learning Glenn Powers

2 The purpose of this experiment is to find out how offering birds the choice of eating normal bird seed black oil sunflower seeds vs eating human seed striped sunflower seeds. I want to see how this changes bird behavior and how they react to this new food choice. I set up this design by hanging the two bird feeders each filled with one type of sunflower seed very close to each other so birds have the deliberate choice of which seed they want to eat. I am using two identical feeders, filled with the same amount of bird seed so the only difference in this experiment is the two sunflower seeds. In my results I am comparing how much seed was eaten by birds over the course of the experiment or just over one day. I am also identifying outliers or errors/bias data to show why that happened how it happened and how it affects my overall data collection. My conclusion is that neither of the two bird seeds are the best, I am showing why I think that by referring to the results, as well as analyzing/interpreting data in my opinion. I am also commenting on how the birds acted when this new food was offered to them I explain the behavior they gave as time went on in the experiment. I am studying the differences in black oil sunflower seeds and striped sunflower seeds, striped sunflower seeds aren t a standard feed for birds, there a human food but I m going to find out what there exact differences are and mainly will birds eat the striped sunflower seeds. The differences between these sunflower seeds which sunflower seeds birds like more and what the consumer should buy. My main questions are the secondary questions behind my essential question and my hypothesis. The questions I m researching will help me figure the out the answers to my hypothesis and essential question, they are: 1. Which sunflower seed type do birds prefer overall and per bird species, 2. How much of each seed goes to waste every time a bird takes one. Answering these questions will along with doing my experiments will help my figure out what sunflower seed the consumer wants to buy for there birds. I will conduct this experiment by filling two feeders one with striped sunflower seeds and the other filled with black oil sunflower seeds, I will keep tabs on who much the birds are eating. My essential question is Which is better, black oil sunflower seeds or striped sunflower seeds. My hypothesis for this is that the popularity of the sunflower seeds for birds will be almost equal. One

3 seed might be more popular then the other but I m guessing not by much meaning there will not be a very big gap between how much of each sunflower seed is eaten over the coarse of my experiment. I believe in this hypothesis mainly because both of these sunflower seeds are very similar in a almost every way. The only other hypothesis would be that black oil sunflower seeds will be more popular by a lot over the striped sunflower seeds because birds know black oil sunflower seeds which they don t with striped sunflower seeds. My research will answer my main questions I have in this study. My experiment will tell me whether my hypothesis is correct or not which will tell to a consumer what bird they want to but for their birds. Having both of these completed I will be able to answer my essential question. I ll start with my materials list that I used to carry out my experiment. 2 tube feeders Lots of striped sunflower seeds (depends on how much is eaten) Lots of black oil sunflower seeds (depends on how much is eaten) A large wooded area 4 feet of length between each bird feeder (make sure you can see each feeder from one of the feeder) 2 trees Because of a bird feeder shortage I had to use 2 shorter tube feeders I filled feeders with 155 grams of each sunflower seed. I placed the feeders in a wooded area at CTL. I placed the bird feeders 4 feet apart, I made sure that I could see the other feeder from standing at one of them, I did this so birds could easily see each feeder and could choose which one they wanted to eat from.

4 Black Oil Striped (Note: this is out of 155 grams) (Note: on the graphs the numbers are rounded to the nearest whole.) My independent dates Black oil sunflower seeds striped sunflower seeds variable in this Friday 2/2/18 55 grams 57.9 grams experiment is the monday 2/5/18 60 grams 10 grams dates that I collected tuesday 2/6/ grams 117 grams the data. The two friday 2/9/ grams 42 grams dependent variables I monday 2/12/18 72 grams 0 grams (because it fell) used in this tuesday 2/13/ grams 37.6 grams experiment in the tuesday 2/27/ grams 155 grams friday 3/2/18 0 grams 27.6 grams tuesday 3/6/ grams 76 grams friday 3/9/18 0 grams o grams

5 Black Oil and Striped sunflower seeds. The majority of this data lies with more striped sunflower seed being eaten then Black Oil seed, as you can see on both graphs. The once piece of bias data in this data set is on Monday 2/12/18 because the striped sunflower bird feeder fell. An outlier in this data set is on Monday 2/5/18 because the striped sunflower seeds is at ten grams, this seems odd because I reset the feeders on 2/2/18 so that means that 145 grams was eaten over a three day period. Another outlier is at 2/13/18 because the striped sunflower seed is at thirty-eight grams, this seems odd because that means that 117 grams of seed was eaten in one day. The last outlier is on 3/9/18 because both seeds had 0 grams in them. I find this to be odd because a total of 300 grams of seed was eaten in three days, this could be bias data but there is no proof. The data on 2/27/18 was a peculiar finding because this is the day I got back from vacation and a reset the data in the mourning then checked it at the end of school. This data is the means of each of the sunflower seeds. (Note: the average seed eaten is over one day, I added up each day between 2/2 and 3/9 except for 2/13-2/27.) The total striped sunflower seed eaten was 1026 grams. The experiment lasted 22 days so the average amount of striped sunflower seeds eaten per day was grams. I added up the differences of 155 grams minus how much of the seeds were left. The total black oil sunflower seed eaten was 700 grams, so the average amount of black oil sunflower seed eaten per day was grams. With this data you can see that the striped sunflower seeds are more popular for the birds by about 150% more than the black oil. The range of the data for striped sunflower seeds is grams. The range of the data for black oil sunflower seeds is grams. This data shows that over time how much of each sunflower seed the birds eat doesn t have a pattern. For my conclusion to my EQ on which bird seed is better black oil or striped sunflower seeds, my final answer is neither. I believe in this answer because when I was conducting the experiment over time I saw that the times black oil was less and striped was less evened out. They were almost equal in how many times one was less than the other, as you can see in my graphs. When it came to how much more seed was eaten and how much seed was eaten in one day, I thought that it might be the striped sunflower seeds because they have a softer shell than the black oil sunflower seeds do so that s why I think birds ate more of the

6 striped. The benefactor of it being a possibility that squirrels ate some of the seeds might play into a part of why striped seemed to be the most popular. I also believe that the birds didn t know what to think of the striped sunflower seeds because they are not a bird food, because on the first day that I collected data the amount of bird seed eaten was almost the exact same, it was the closest to equal besides the ones with zero grams each. The differences were off by three grams between the two seeds. (Note: this is all my speculation/interpretation.) If it is true that the bird liked the striped sunflower seeds the best, and no squirrels were involved, the birds ate the black oil seeds and not really eating the striped until they figured out that the striped seeds were pretty much the same thing then they started eating them more regularly, then when I took the measurements they were almost equal. That is only an interpretation of what happened but since then most of the next trials fell into the striped sunflower seeds favor. I only collected ten pieces of data and this is what I can tell of that, if I did this experiment for a year I might be saying something completely different. I am confident in my answer because I hung the bird feeders four feet apart which made it so birds could see both bird feeders and had the choice of which seed they wanted to eat. Another reason I think neither seed is better because they are both sunflower seeds and a pretty much the same exact thing, in terms of bird behavior I think they wanted to eat the striped sunflower seeds because they have a softer shell making it easier for them to get the seed which shows that birds want the easier seed to get. If I was going to continue this experiment I would consider adding in another variable which would be another seed type like mixed bird seed or shelled seeds. I think that would be interesting to research what makes all of these seeds different and how it changes birds behavior when they have the choice of what they want to eat.