Project FeederWatch: Food Log

Thank you for volunteering to participate in the Project FeederWatch Food Log! Our team is interested in learning more about how the food participants provide during the FeederWatch season and how it may affect bird and mammal abundance. 

Instructions:

Choose an eight-week period that ends by April 30, 2025 during which you can monitor how much food you provide in your count site. It’s fine if you are away for a portion of the eight-weeks, so long as the dates and amounts of food added to your feeders during that period is recorded. Please choose a period when you are doing FeederWatch counts for at least most of the eight weeks. Download the Food Log Tally Sheet above. You can either print it out and write on it or save it to your computer and type into it. Record in the tally sheet the dates that you fill your feeders and the amount of food you add each time you add food to your count site. Record the amount of food you put out regardless of who eats the food, whether it be birds or mammals. Please provide food as you normally would.

NOTE: Before you begin, please measure how many cups of seed your seed scoop holds. The measurement doesn’t have to be perfect. Please use one single scooping device throughout the research period when adding food to your feeders to ensure consistent measurements.

Each time you add food to your count site during the eight-week period you chose, please record in the tally sheet the date and the amount of food provided using the categories in the tally sheet and provided in the image below. Foods like mealworms that don’t have a designated column should be recorded in the Other column. There will be additional space when you enter your data to provide information about the foods reported in the Other column.

For scoopable foods, like seeds, corn, peanuts, and mealworms, please record the number of scoops of food added in the appropriate column for each date you add food. For suet please record the number of suet/bark butter sites replenished, regardless of what size suet blocks you use or how much is added to each of your suet/bark butter sites. Similarly, for seed blocks or cylinders please record the number of blocks added regardless of the size of the blocks. If you provide nectar or jelly, please record them in the Other column by estimating what portion of your scoop those foods would take up if you were scooping them. If you provide a variety of foods that don’t have a designated column, add together the number of scoops for each type and report the total scoop count in the Other column. For example, if on a given date you put out a ½ scoop of mealworms and the equivalent of ¼ scoop of nectar, record .75 in the Other column to indicate that you provided ¾ of a scoop of foods that don’t have a designated column.

Timing:

You may choose any eight-week period any time during the current FeederWatch season, which ends on April 30, 2025. Please enter food counts for all dates that you added food during the eight-week period you chose. We will assume no food was added on dates that are not on the list. 

Example: Different food types were added on November 11th and 15th, but no food was
added on the 12th, 13th, or 14th. On November 11th, two scoops of sunflower seeds, one and a half scoops of corn, and one seed block were added to feeders, and three suet/bark butter sites were replenished. On November 15th, one scoop of sunflower seeds, one scoop of corn, one scoop of nyjer/thistle, two and a half scoops of mixed seed, and one scoop of peanuts were added, with one suet/bark butter site replenished.

Entering the Data:

At the end of the eight-week period, please enter the data you recorded on the Food Log Tally Sheet into our online form here. Please wait until you are finished keeping track of your food additions before accessing the data entry form. You will only be able to enter data once.