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**leangarance** · 02-04-2006, 01:19 AM

You shouldn't feed wild birds, anyway. That helps only the weak individuals to survive & eventually weakens the whole population.
For the rest I generally agree with Frank, it's simply blown out of proportion. To declare a state of disaster on an island, just because some dozens of birds died of bird flu (as happened in Germany), is ridiculous.

I feed the birds that come into my garden.
Where i live in England, its not so much just a matter of survival of the fittest, people have recently discovered that the large decline in many bird species is simply due to the fact they are starving due to our influence on the enviroment;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4686136.stm

Many birds that hang around populated areas are already scavengers, especially with the low amount of natural food resources we have down here for most wildlife anyway- so i doubt my behavior of regually feeding them will influence their behavior in much way, i also feed alot of more natural foods like live insects that i buy from my local petshop.
I regually feed the birds that come into my garden, i have numerous bird feeders of various sorts hanging off the tree and wall in it, i dont see any problem with feeding the birds as long as if they do get used to finding food in your place, that you dont randomly cut off the supply- but i always make sure they have food. I've seen many a rare bird come into my garden for food as well, so i must be doing somthing good if i am supplying food for the species of birds that really need it

.

I agree most of the bird flu fears is drastically hyped up by the media, although it does still have the potential to cause major damage as it is already doing in many other countries- i am still interested in the spread of the desease though. But i wonder if it is going to be a bit like the mad cow desease situation, where it was massively blown out of proportion by the media, hundreds of millions of cows were slaughtered, thousands of farmers went out of buisness, thousands of other people lost their jobs, and in the end, only a couple of hundred people tops died out of the nation- and now they say that they may not have contracted any desease at all, but rather mercury poisening.
The thing is though with the mad cow desease crisis, is that millions of people stopped buying beef even though in reality you had more chance of being hit by an asteriod than contracting the desease, which is now itself in doubt. I wonder if with all the bird flu hype that millions of people who feed wild birds will also stop because of the fears in a similar situation as the beef crisis. They even say now that domesticated cats can carry the desease, so i wonder how they will fare in all of this

?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4761024.stm

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02-04-2006, 01:19 AM	#11
leangarance Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 499 Senior Member	You shouldn't feed wild birds, anyway. That helps only the weak individuals to survive & eventually weakens the whole population. For the rest I generally agree with Frank, it's simply blown out of proportion. To declare a state of disaster on an island, just because some dozens of birds died of bird flu (as happened in Germany), is ridiculous. I feed the birds that come into my garden. Where i live in England, its not so much just a matter of survival of the fittest, people have recently discovered that the large decline in many bird species is simply due to the fact they are starving due to our influence on the enviroment; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4686136.stm Many birds that hang around populated areas are already scavengers, especially with the low amount of natural food resources we have down here for most wildlife anyway- so i doubt my behavior of regually feeding them will influence their behavior in much way, i also feed alot of more natural foods like live insects that i buy from my local petshop. I regually feed the birds that come into my garden, i have numerous bird feeders of various sorts hanging off the tree and wall in it, i dont see any problem with feeding the birds as long as if they do get used to finding food in your place, that you dont randomly cut off the supply- but i always make sure they have food. I've seen many a rare bird come into my garden for food as well, so i must be doing somthing good if i am supplying food for the species of birds that really need it . I agree most of the bird flu fears is drastically hyped up by the media, although it does still have the potential to cause major damage as it is already doing in many other countries- i am still interested in the spread of the desease though. But i wonder if it is going to be a bit like the mad cow desease situation, where it was massively blown out of proportion by the media, hundreds of millions of cows were slaughtered, thousands of farmers went out of buisness, thousands of other people lost their jobs, and in the end, only a couple of hundred people tops died out of the nation- and now they say that they may not have contracted any desease at all, but rather mercury poisening. The thing is though with the mad cow desease crisis, is that millions of people stopped buying beef even though in reality you had more chance of being hit by an asteriod than contracting the desease, which is now itself in doubt. I wonder if with all the bird flu hype that millions of people who feed wild birds will also stop because of the fears in a similar situation as the beef crisis. They even say now that domesticated cats can carry the desease, so i wonder how they will fare in all of this ? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4761024.stm .... .... .....
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