[Oh, no, the dreaded To Feed Or Not To Feed thread!]

As most long-time tweeters already know, I'm firmly in the No Feed camp,
even if it is hard to watch the Song Sparrow pecking at the gravel in the
wind and bitter cold, so fluffed up he looks likes like a brown tennis ball
with a beak and tail.

Consider deer. People cannot stand to see them starve during the winter
and, with few predators left, the population of white-tailed deer is
extremely high. So, deer often get fed corn through the winter and wildlife
departments are encouraged to feed deer. The population stays high. The
deer's favorite food plants never get a break from the deer. Many native
plants are close to extinction from the unrelenting grazing pressure. The
deer overpopulation has effects that cascade through the ecosystem, to the
detriment of animals that might need the seeds or berries of favorite deer
plants. The effects of feeding birds are not as obvious as the effect of
deer overpopulation, but it's hard to believe they aren't there.

Today, I was eating lunch and scanning the yard with the binos. I ran
across a Northern Shrike also eating lunch on a small brush pile. When I
scoped it, the meal appeared to be a small rodent, probably a Montane Vole.
I got to wondering why Shrikes are not more common in cities in winter,
where small birds are much more abundant than in my bleak yard with its very
low bird density. There are, of course, numerous possibilities, and I have
no idea what the answer is. It might be that shrikes need a supply of
voles, which tend to decline in cities. Maybe shrikes don't tolerate noise.
It might be that there are too many cats or too many cars. Or, it might be
that there are too MANY small birds in cities, which attract sharpies,
which, perhaps, also prey on the conspicuous and solitary shrikes.

If you try to help wildlife through the winter, your efforts will be
proportionately more helpful to the nonnative species that otherwise
couldn't make it than on those native species than can survive the bad
times.

If I were to play the devil's advocate, I could point out that we all have
impacts we can't avoid. Human structures provide shelter and warmth, etc.
You might also argue that people are so irrevocably changing the environment
that it's ludicrous to imagine that by not feeding birds you might help
bring native species back. Both good points...

Kelly Cassidy
Pullman, WA