Boost urban songbirds by feeding them mealworms rather than nuts and seeds, study suggests

Insect-rich diets help chicks gain weight more rapidly, which results in better breeding success as adults, Kate Ng reports

(Krisztina Sándor)

Providing an insect-rich diet instead of just nuts and seeds to urban songbirds can boost their populations in cities, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that feeding urban great tits with insects like mealworms, which are high in protein and fat, dramatically increased their breeding success – in some cases, to the same rates as their forest-dwelling counterparts.

A study published in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Animal Ecology has become the first to suggest that access to an abundance of nutritious food during developmental stages can help city-dwelling great tits overcome the challenges of living in urban areas.