It is important to clean to avoid infections.

Time and time again, we are urged to clean the seed-strewn lawn, yet no one has ever described how to actually disinfect the small area where all the seeds fall and the birds love to gather on a daily basis.

We find this myth so amusing because everyone who has written about bird feeding recently keeps repeating it. It always seems to stop at the point where it is emphasized that cleaning is so important - the writer always leaves the great burden and shame to you.  No one has ever come up with that little nifty simple tip on HOW you are actually supposed to go about cleaning away all the bacteria, viruses, and yellow knot parasites from the ground beneath the bird feeding area.

The latest thing we've read is in the newly published book (Nov 2021) “Feeding Birds - Everything You Need to Know” on page 87: "Food on the ground poses a potential risk of infection, which can be avoided by regularly cleaning the feeding area”

If we interpret what is written here strictly, we can completely avoid infections by regularly cleaning the ground. How often we need to clean to totally eliminate the risk of infections is not specified, nor, as usual, how to do it. It's just a repeated cliché that makes us feel uncertain and guilty about food on the ground.

It's a bit like someone handing you a roll of toilet paper for a sheep's fleece smeared with feces and standing behind a corner giggling when you start the project to get it completely clean and white again – and free from bacteria.

Back to cleaning and hygiene. There are some absolute truths that most people who feed birds are aware of. We'll outline them here and then further discuss hygiene and cleaning based on these truths.
- The more food on the ground, food in more places and over larger areas, the more birds you can attract.
- Many birds actually ONLY eat from the ground (or where they can really stand, like on a board, tray, or similar). Yellowhammers are one such bird, while robins and thrushes are others. Almost all feeding guests prefer to eat from the ground, and if you want many birds of different species, it’s essential to offer food on the ground. (More on ground feeding in myth #7!)
- No one has managed to present a simple truth on how to satisfactorily clean away infections from a muddy lawn. (Someone suggested a tarp - but consider days when it rains… snows, is freezing cold. Or just practically - how should this tarp be disinfected and cleaned every day or more often? And how long should it stay there? What happens to the ground underneath?)

- We know that birds poop randomly all day, and we know they don't wash their hands afterwards. If you have birds infected with salmonella, they will continue to poop right after you've cleaned. Another bird steps in it, it ends up on the food, etc...
- We know that birds do not apply hand sanitizer to their feet every time they've sat on a perch or held a sunflower seed. So if a bird were to carry an infection via its feet, disinfecting an entire bird feeder would be quickly undone.
- We know a bit about the disease known as trichomoniasis. The parasite that lives in the throats of finches—primarily in greenfinches—has hit the greenfinch population hard, more than halving since 2008 when the disease arrived in Sweden. It appears the disease spreads most at bird feedings. A sick bird cannot swallow; it takes a seed in its mouth, contaminates it with parasites from its throat, spits it out, and then another bird picks up the seed and gets infected. No cleaning in the world can stop this process. The general advice that is always reiterated if you have sick greenfinches is to stop feeding for a few weeks “to break the chain of infection”. But is it that simple? Infected (and uninfected) birds are guaranteed to fly from your feeder in all directions to other feeders... on the other hand, really sick birds that aren't able to fly away will die quicker and not spread their infection further. We also know that birds are generally less stationary than we think at bird feeders—many species move around, and potential infections are constantly spread between feeders. The most radical way to truly reduce the spread of this disease would be to ban bird feeding—but that would likely be as impossible as banning outdoor cats overnight. And perhaps not desirable either—maybe just as we accept some negative consequences of having cats, we have to accept some negative consequences of bird feeding. Unfortunate for certain individual greenfinches though... We should also remember that before the disease, the greenfinch population might have been larger than nature itself could support, due to extensive bird feeding.
- When we talk about thoroughly cleaning bird feeders, especially at the bottom of tube feeders where it tends to get dirty and mucky, it's highly unlikely that the sources of infection lie there. It's more about mold, which of course isn't good—if the birds were to choose to eat a moldy seed over a fresh one.

So what to do?
- If we want to feed the birds, we simply have to accept a greater risk of spreading diseases. However, there are a few things we can do to avoid having too many birds in one concentrated spot. Although there is no scientific evidence, it seems reasonable that it would be a bit more hygienic. But again... if you think of a bird infected with salmonella that comes and poops directly on a new and fresh spot - or a greenfinch infected with trichomoniasis that returns just after you've taken some action... It's very hard to assert with emphasis that even the following measures would really make any actual difference.

1. Move the bird feeder often so that food does not fall on the same small spot on the ground for too long. This is often the problem—you have one feeder, perhaps a tube feeder, because you've heard that bird tables are very unhygienic as birds can defecate and eat from the food at the same time. However, many seeds spill directly under the tube, giving you the same effect as a bird table but on the ground—under the tube. This is the only time we at Slåttergubben recommend a product—a bird feeder pole with a base—which makes it very easy to move a few meters, something that can be done daily. However, not if it's frozen or if deer come and rampage at night. Perhaps you could have a bird table placed on a chair or a table? Feeders hanging from a horizontal line where you move the feeder with a rope along the line a little each day?
   But the question is, how much does this really matter? No one has seriously investigated it. The majority of people who feed birds will still have a fixed mounted tube or bird table with a small spot underneath where the food lands and where many birds love to peck.
2. Use a tray under the bird feeder so that nothing ends up on the ground. There are ready-made ones available to purchase—okay, here we go recommending another gadget… So, this can be good if you have extremely sensitive neighbors or for some other reason want to avoid food on the ground at all costs. There are other homemade setups as well where food lands on a tray or table. Sometimes, these are high enough up that brown rats can't reach them. However, these measures completely exclude Slåttergubben's favorite bird, the yellowhammer, and many others that prefer searching for food on the ground. Infections spread directly via droppings and infected seeds on the tray (but it is easy to clean). A tray under these tube feeders essentially turns it into a bird table where birds walk in the food and defecate in it—exactly what we often read we should avoid for hygiene reasons… but at least these trays are easy to clean!
3. Use direct ground feeding without going through a bird feeder—there's absolutely nothing to be ashamed of here, be proud instead! This way, you don't have to buy plastic gadgets or bother moving and refilling narrow bird feeders. Spread the food over a large area, the bigger the better, and vary where you throw food from day to day. You'll have a feeding system where the birds are more dispersed. ALL species can help themselves!
4. Use shelled sunflower kernels instead of sunflower seeds. This drastically reduces the amount of waste in the garden. Whether it actually reduces health risks is highly unclear. The advantage of pre-shelled sunflower seeds is that you don't have to refill as often, more species can easily eat them, you use half as much packaging, and half as much freight is needed to bring goods to Sweden from Southeast Europe, where sunflowers are grown. The shells are typically used there as biofuel.

More about ground feeding in myth number 7.