Maybe a dumb question, but if I write a fictional story based on general facts (like “Tweetie is a bird living in North Carolina. She usually eats these kinds of seeds, found only in that state”), I don’t need to cite my sources, do I?

I mean it’s fiction. So… it doesn’t matter if you have Tweetie eating seeds from North Carolina that a similar bird would generally eat, or unicorn poop from Mars that doesn’t exist at all. Obviously for a *realistic* story you will want to do your research as necessary and hew close to what an actual bird of that kind would actually eat, because otherwise readers will get annoyed with you. But…