When it comes to bird perches, it’s best to provide variety—after all, in the wild, they wouldn’t be sitting on the same ...

If feeding birds on the ground, move the food around from place to place and spread it out, Hochachka said. Use fresh seed to avoid mold or fungus growth, Hochachka said.

While gibbons are so adept at swinging from branch to branch that they recover about 80 percent of the energy output from one swing to the next, these birds were far less so at around 25 percent.