Nature is a very complex thing, and when natural systems are altered,
disrupted and replaced the consequences are often much more complex than
humans can understand. We see far too little of the world, and know far too
little of how it all interacts together. I live surrounded by 25 acres of
native forests. I would suspect that the limiting factors on bird
populations around me involve nesting space, predation, climate-weather, and
food to list the obvious ones. Food is the primary factor that I can
influence. I spend hours each week watching birds at the feeder out my
window and I often come up with dozens of questions about the social
interactions, the affects of feeding on survival of direct and indirect
species, etc, etc, etc. And I live with the frustration that few if any of
my many questions will ever have definitive answers.

Science is the process of paying attention to the world and asking
questions, with a lot a patience and luck, at best a few partial answers
emerge to a tiny handful of questions. So I get edgy when people quote
"science" to support a viewpoint. Data is better than none, but when you get
into ecology, my learning is that extrapolating data to cause and effect is
always done with a great deal of caution. Of course people, and their
processes want answers, clean, black and white. The scientist typically
hedges, knowing how little any one set of data actually tells us about the
complexity around us.

I read somewhere that more than 10 million people in America feed birds.
That is a lot of food resources and I would think it would have all kinds of
interesting impacts on all manner of species. Knowing if that impact is
beneficial or harmful to any particular species is something we might not
ever be able to understand.

So I mess with the natural systems by putting out food resources, knowing
that in the final analysis, I can not know the impact I am having, better or
worse. But I do know, I feed birds primarily for myself, to draw wildlife
close so I can comfortabely view them, and I hope I am doing no large harm.

Rob Sandelin
Naturalist/teacher
Snohomish County

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