Suggested answer: Birds help spread the seeds of berries by eating them and excreting them in a different place. 9. How do birds benefit from spreading the seeds of berries? Suggested answer: The simplest response, stated in the passage, is that birds get food. Students may also take the long view and answer that spreading seeds benefits birds by increasing their future food supply. 10. Explain how plant reproduction can affect other living things.
How do birds spread seeds across the land?
One way is by spreading the seeds of plants. When birds eat fruits and berries, they move seeds away from the parent plant. Sometimes they do this by carrying a large fruit away to eat it.
How do birds help plants?
Bird droppings (poop) can also be a fertilizer when if falls on soil. This is not mutualism because the bird doesn’t really benefit by dropping its waste near the plant. Sometimes birds might help plants indirectly. For example, an owl might eat mice that would have eaten a plant. Other birds eat insects that might eat plants.
How do birds spread fertilizer?
One way is by spreading the seeds of plants. When birds eat fruits and berries, they move seeds away from the parent plant. Sometimes they do this by carrying a large fruit away to eat it. Sometimes they do this by eating small fruits and berries whole. When they defecate (poop) in another place, the seeds are also covered with fertilizer.
What birds eat berries in the winter?
7 Backyard Birds That Eat Berries 1 Thrushes. Robins and bluebirds are the thrushes you usually see in winter. ... 2 Bluebirds. After insects dwindle, bluebirds heavily depend on berries, and small wintering groups are always on the lookout. 3 Northern Mockingbirds 4 American Robins
How do birds benefit from spreading seeds?
When eating fruit, birds digest the fleshy part and then pass the seeds out along with their droppings. The fecal material gives seeds a dose of fertilizer high in nitrogen, which can help fuel growth.
How far can birds spread seeds?
Some species of plants are capable of colonising new habitats thanks to birds that transport their seeds in their plumage or digestive tract. Until recently it was known that birds could do this over short distances, but a new study shows that they are also capable of dispersing them over more than 300 kilometres.
Do birds spread seeds by pooping?
Birds and animals may disperse seeds in the following ways: Birds: Through their droppings or by regurgitation. Birds may also knock seeds off plants while feeding, or drop seeds while flying.
How do birds benefit from plants?
Birds retreat to trees and bushes as protection from predators and to rest and roost. And directly or indirectly, plants provide all the foods that birds eat. Seeds, nuts, and fruit help sustain many birds all year long, and some species also nibble nutritious plant buds or sip flower nectar.
What happens when birds eat berries?
Bigger birds will gobble the whole fruit. Smaller ones tend to peck into the fruit, leaving damaged berries to spoil. Both, in their happy frenzy, will knock ripe and unripe fruit off the bush. The most common blueberry-eating birds are starlings and robins.
Do birds eat seeds whole?
You can't go wrong when using sunflower seeds to attract birds. Birds do not eat sunflower seeds whole. Most seed-eating birds have tough, strong beaks for cracking open the seeds. Some birds wedge the seeds into a crack in a rock or branch and peck to get through the hard shell to the soft inner.
What benefit do the droppings of fruit-eating birds have on the environment?
Fruit-eating birds swallow seeds but may not digest them, so their droppings disperse seeds over great distances. Insect-eating birds, such as swallows and chimney swifts, catch great numbers of mosquitoes and other insects, and therefore help control insect populations.
Do birds digest seeds?
Seed-eating birds utilize a unique process in order to digest their hard-shelled diets. Digestive enzymes cannot penetrate the seed shells (for doves and other species that swallow the shells) nor, in some cases, the inner seed covering (species that crack seeds before eating).
What the color of your poop means?
The color of your stool depends on a couple of things: your diet and how much bile is in it. Bile is a yellow-green fluid that helps digest fats. A healthy stool, then, should reflect a mixture of all the colors of the food you eat and that bile. Almost any shade of brown, or even green, is considered OK.
Do birds pee?
The answer lies in the fact that birds, unlike mammals, don't produce urine. Instead they excrete nitrogenous wastes in the form of uric acid, which emerges as a white paste.
How do birds eating fruit help the reproductive cycle of plants?
According to Carlo, when birds eat fruits, they help plants to reproduce by spreading their seeds around.
How do birds help a plant in the dispersal of its pollen?
Birds like hummingbirds will eat the nectar in a flower, but some of the pollen will stick to the bird and be transferred to another flower. For plants to make new plants, they need pollen to go from one flower to another which birds help with. Also, birds will eat the bugs which can hurt the plant.
How do birds move seeds away from their parent plant?
When birds eat fruits and berries, they move seeds away from the parent plant. Sometimes they do this by carrying a large fruit away to eat it. Sometimes they do this by eating small fruits and berries whole. When they defecate (poop) in another place, the seeds are also covered with fertilizer.
Why do seeds grow so close to the parent plant?
When seeds grow near the parent plant, they may compete for water, light, and nutrients. When they are far away, they don’t compete with the parent or each other as much. There may have been diseases or other living things that attacked the parent plant. Birds may have moved the seeds away to a safer place.
Can birds be fertilizers?
Bird droppings (poop) can also be a fertilizer when if falls on soil. This is not mutualism because the bird doesn’t really benefit by dropping its waste near the plant. Sometimes birds might help plants indirectly. For example, an owl might eat mice that would have eaten a plant.
Do birds eat nectar?
Yes, some of them do. Birds like hummingbirds will eat the nectar in a flower, but some of the pollen will stick to the bird and be transferred to another flower. For plants to make new plants, they need pollen to go from one flower to another which birds help with. Also, birds will eat the bugs which can hurt the plant.
Do birds carry pollen?
And some birds carry pollen from plant flowers to other plant flowers. Many flowers need pollen to make fruit and seeds. Plants have ways to make birds help them. Plants have bright flowers that birds see and fly to, and plants have leaves and branches for resting places and shelters for the birds.
Do birds help plants grow?
Birds do spread plant seeds, though, which helps the plants reproduce, but they don't help them grow. Birds can help plants grow by spreading the plants' seeds, pollinating the plants themselves, and also by eating insects that are pests to plants.
Do hummingbirds get nectar from plants?
Hummingbirds move pollen from one plant to another, just like bees do. Like bees, the hummingbirds get nectar from the plants when they visit. When members of two different species do things that help both of them, we call this mutualism. They don’t know that they are helping each other, but it works out that way.
What birds eat bayberry?
Cedar waxwings, ruffed grouse and fox sparrows all devour the plants' scarlet berries. Bayberry: Most species of bayberry, including northern bayberry and Pacific wax myrtle, are vital to winter wildlife. In the Southeast, tree swallows and other birds swarm to southern wax myrtle if a late cold front strikes in spring.
What birds eat dried flowers?
Seed-eating birds such as juncos and goldfinches enjoy the dried flower heads of asters, coneflowers and other native plants. Winter wildflower stalks also provide wildlife with places to seek refuge from storms and predators, and insects pass the winter in the dead stalks.
What is the name of the tree that attracts grouse and waxwings?
Sitka mountain ash is a western species. Both have showy white blossoms in the spring. After a few freeze-and-thaw cycles, the orange-red fruit attracts grosbeaks, grouse and waxwings. Hawthorn: Dozens of species of hawthorns are found in the United States and Canada.
Where do berries come from?
American Persimmons: Native from Connecticut to Iowa and Kansas south to Florida and Texas , American persimmon trees produce ornamental, purplish-orange fruits that hang on leafless branches in autumn.
Where do blackberries grow?
Blackberries: The common, or Allegheny, blackberry grows in the Northeast and Midwest and south to Virginia and Missouri. California blackberry, also called dewberry, is native to the Pacific Northwest. Blueberries: The highbush blueberry is native to the East and Midwest, other blueberry species are native to most of the United States and Canada.
Where are elderberries native to?
Elderberries: Native throughout much of the United States and Canada. Pawpaws: Producing the largest edible fruit of any North American native plant, pawpaw shrubs or small trees range from New York to Iowa and south from Florida to Texas.
What are the best plants for wildlife?
Many birds and small mammals rely on the late summer and fall harvest of berries and seeds. The best winter-fruiting plants for wildlife are native trees and shrubs. Many of these same plants also serve as host plants for butterflies and provide nectar and pollen for many pollinators. Birds that rely on insects in the summer ...
What do bluebirds eat in the winter?
Evergreen holly, hawthorn and native junipers like eastern red cedar provide a much bigger banquet, attracting bluebirds for several weeks. Almost any berries are fair game, including those of poison ivy. In late winter, look for bluebirds at the fuzzy spires of staghorn sumac, along with birds like robins, northern flickers and downy woodpeckers. Learn more about what bluebirds eat in winter.
What trees attract bluebirds?
Evergreen holly, hawthorn and native junipers like eastern red cedar provide a much bigger banquet, attracting bluebirds for several weeks. Almost any berries are fair game, including those of poison ivy. In late winter, look for bluebirds at the fuzzy spires of staghorn sumac, along with birds like robins, northern flickers and downy woodpeckers.
What birds are in winter?
Thrushes. Robins and bluebirds are the thrushes you usually see in winter. But the varied thrush of the Northwest, the Townsend’s solitaire of the West, and the widespread hermit thrush also stay all winter. Hermit thrushes (above) and varied thrushes feed on a variety of berries, often alone.
What do wood warblers eat?
They also eat the berries of juniper, poison ivy, poison oak and Virginia creeper. If you’re near a bayberry or other myrtle, listen for a signature sharp chip. Tree swallows, the only other birds capable of turning myrtle wax into vital fat, often join the warblers at myrtles in their coastal wintering areas. If you love to watch birds, these are the 12 berry plants birders should grow.
What are the best plants to feed waxwings?
Look for wandering winter waxwings at flowering crab, hawthorn, mountain ash, deciduous or evergreen hollies, junipers, toyon and more—any berry plant that offers a feast big enough for a flock.
What birds turn myrtle wax into fat?
If you’re near a bayberry or other myrtle, listen for a signature sharp chip. Tree swallows, the only other birds capable of turning myrtle wax into vital fat, often join the warblers at myrtles in their coastal wintering areas. If you love to watch birds, these are the 12 berry plants birders should grow.
What is the name of the bird that eats blue fruit?
Cedar Waxwings. A juniper tree ( Juniperus virginiana) is responsible for the common name of cedar waxwings, which flock to the blue-gray fruit in winter. “Flocking” is the word, because these social birds do nearly everything as a group. They have no home territory except at nesting time.