The History of Bird Food

Bird feeding is an age-old practice that has been going on in many places for centuries, including in the United States. Henry David Thoreau even mentions leaving unripened corn out for birds in his famous 1854 work, Walden (originally published as Walden; or, Life in the Woods). For centuries, the U.S. was an agricultural country, so people generally fed birds by leaving out excess grain, waste from production processes, or spoiled goods. This continued throughout the Great Depression, when many out-of-work Americans took up birdwatching and bird feeding as a hobby to keep themselves entertained while stuck at home. They generally fed birds with leftover corn or “scratch,” which was a type of waste grain that could be picked up for free at local grain elevators. As the hobby grew, store owners began to pay attention. A general store owned by brothers Simon and George Wagner first pivoted to selling caged bird feed, then put out a mix for wild birds based on the types of waste grains they seemed to enjoy, creating one of the earliest commercial wild bird food options. Around the same time, Knauf and Tesch, which owned and operated grain elevators in the Midwest, developed special bird food for show pigeons and later spawned both Wagner’s and Kaytee, two very popular wild bird food providers that still exist today. In the 1970s, studies were conducted to determine what elements of bird food were actually liked by wild birds and which were healthiest for them. Some ingredients, such as black oil sunflower seeds, proved almost universally beloved by many species and are still used in modern bird food mixes. Today, bird food is widely available at many stores and mixes are usually tailored to support local birds that humans want to attract into their yards. And of course, in addition to wild bird food, most pet stores also carry specialized mixes designed to nourish various pet birds, who cannot get most of their nutrients from their environment the way that wild birds do.