I’m having serious misgivings about the practice of feeding
the local garden birds. The logic runs thus:
It seems to me that populations of wild creatures are mainly
controlled by three factors: the food supply, predation and climate. It would
appear logical to assume, therefore, that if I feed the birds regularly, I’m
artificially inflating the food supply and thereby creating an artificially
inflated population of birds – one that the natural supply couldn’t
provide for if I stopped. And there’s another problem at the moment. I have at
least a dozen pheasants coming into the garden this year and taking all the
food. Pheasants aren’t indigenous to Britain;
the ones I’m getting have wandered away from the shooting grounds where their
numbers are controlled by gamekeepers and are now trying to survive in an
environment to which they are not naturally adapted. They will obviously take
food wherever they can find it, and who can blame them? But they’re creating
what must amount to a famine among the population of small birds.
It seems I’m playing God, and I don’t like that. So what do
I do? Chain myself to the house 24/7 and keep constant guard over the bird
table to ward off the pheasants? Hardly practicable, is it? Or do I simply not bother, which effectively amounts
to taking Ebenezer’s view:
‘Let them die and reduce the surplus population.’
No comments:
Post a Comment