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| Discovery Bay, Central Park eatery, the MooFish |
I bumped into a fellow dog walker, and we got chatting, as fellow canophiles do. I don’t know her name, so let’s call her Karen. A Gweilo, as we say here.
We got onto feeding birds and I commented that the birds we fed in our back yard — “our” birds — preferred bread to rice. “Ironic”, I said, “here in Hong Kong and they prefer western food to Chinese”. I know. Weak joke. But instead of a weak smile, I got a tirade. We shouldn’t be feeding birds! That’s unnatural! We should leave them to their own thing! Eating food they find themselves!
Taken aback, we parted and when I got home I consulted my Google. The website of the world’s oldest birds society, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, says it’s perfectly fine to feed bread to birds, as long as you make sure it doesn’t have too much salt. I was feeding them my own home-made, organic, low-salt sourdough bread, so big tick there. And the rice is saltless.
So far: Me: 1. Karen: 0.
Other thoughts:
The birds are “ours” in the sense that they live on our land, but they consider it their own land. They know us. We know them. We are family. They breed in our trees and shrubs. They come into our house when we’re not looking. Wandering around our indoors, we’ve had Crested Bulbuls, Magpie Robins, Speckled Doves, Asian Myna birds, Common Sparrows, Violet Whistling Thrushes, and even, once, an Emerald Flycatcher.
They are comfortable with us, and we with them. Us feeding them is part of that. We are part of nature ourselves. Something that many of the Karens of the world deny. To them we are apart from nature, we are different, a pox, a virus on nature. When I counter that we part of nature, and that we are its most intelligent part, the most intelligent life form in the universe, as far as we know, it's eyebrows raised, screwed up faces from the Karens. Don’t I know what damage humans are doing to the world? And don’t you know that feeding the birds our food is part of that damage?
I think of the birds that decide to hang out with humans. They’re the ones doing best. Like all animals. Dogs do better than wolves. Cats do better than tigers. Cattle do better than Ibex. Sure, we eat some of them; but they don’t know that do they?!
Of course we also want wolves and wolverines, our tigers and snow leopards, our Ibex and Kudu. This means setting land aside for them. Which we can do more when humans gather in cities, leaving the countryside to re-wild. Which we do as we get richer. So, getting richer is a good thing. For wild animals as well as those human-centred birds. Which in turn means capitalism. Which the Karens of the world despise. Look at China. It became richer by capitalism. That led to more city living, less in the country, better life for wildlife. While better life for domestic animals and the birds that come to our windowsills.
By all means, feed birds. It’s natural!
