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**Scukonah** · 09-01-2012, 11:48 AM

It appears that a lack of food for birds during their breeding seasons is becomming a bigger threat now days than harsh winters;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4835208.stm

Still the BBC encourages people to feed the birds, while i agree bossel my garden is nothing like a wildlife researve and it probably never will be, for most of us that only have a small amount of money to spare on things like encouraging wildlife to thrive, feeding creatures like the birds can help them enormously.
If the birds would never naturally survive then they will get picked off by predators and bad weather etc anyways wether you feed them or not. But if i knew that the food i gave to say, a pair of sparrows during the summer, enabled them to successfully raise 3 of their offspring that would have otherwise died from starvation due to the influence of man on the enviroment, and those 3 little sparrows grow up to have more babys each and so on and so forth, and perhaps years down the line, just because of the ’2 bag of bird food and bird cake helped create 100 more sparrows in the wild- then i would be very satisfied.
Pigeons thrive in this country not because they are great at building nests and raising young, or good at finding food and coping with the winters, but because by their own choice they have moved in their millions in the populated cities and related areas and scavenged off people- they are still wild birds, but are successful because they have learned how to take advantage of people. If they hadn't, they would probably be like most of the other thousands of rare species of birds in england in decline. They don't spend all their time in populated areas either, for the most part they live in the countryside, but come a harsh winter they crowd into the cities.
I don't think feeding the birds though will create people-dependant weak domesticated birds, because;
a. Birds that end up in towns, cities and villages are already relatively tolerant of people and would be there wether people fed them or not.
b. Feeding the birds just gives them food, if the birds become weak they would be killed by natural things anyways- it would just be the likelyhood of starvation as a cause of death would be less high.
c. Even town/city birds do not spend all their time in such populataed areas- for example, starlings have been coming into our towns and cities for centuarys, and every night they retreat back into the countryside in giant flocks.

09-01-2012, 11:48 AM	#20
Scukonah Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 546 Senior Member	It appears that a lack of food for birds during their breeding seasons is becomming a bigger threat now days than harsh winters; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4835208.stm Still the BBC encourages people to feed the birds, while i agree bossel my garden is nothing like a wildlife researve and it probably never will be, for most of us that only have a small amount of money to spare on things like encouraging wildlife to thrive, feeding creatures like the birds can help them enormously. If the birds would never naturally survive then they will get picked off by predators and bad weather etc anyways wether you feed them or not. But if i knew that the food i gave to say, a pair of sparrows during the summer, enabled them to successfully raise 3 of their offspring that would have otherwise died from starvation due to the influence of man on the enviroment, and those 3 little sparrows grow up to have more babys each and so on and so forth, and perhaps years down the line, just because of the ’2 bag of bird food and bird cake helped create 100 more sparrows in the wild- then i would be very satisfied. Pigeons thrive in this country not because they are great at building nests and raising young, or good at finding food and coping with the winters, but because by their own choice they have moved in their millions in the populated cities and related areas and scavenged off people- they are still wild birds, but are successful because they have learned how to take advantage of people. If they hadn't, they would probably be like most of the other thousands of rare species of birds in england in decline. They don't spend all their time in populated areas either, for the most part they live in the countryside, but come a harsh winter they crowd into the cities. I don't think feeding the birds though will create people-dependant weak domesticated birds, because; a. Birds that end up in towns, cities and villages are already relatively tolerant of people and would be there wether people fed them or not. b. Feeding the birds just gives them food, if the birds become weak they would be killed by natural things anyways- it would just be the likelyhood of starvation as a cause of death would be less high. c. Even town/city birds do not spend all their time in such populataed areas- for example, starlings have been coming into our towns and cities for centuarys, and every night they retreat back into the countryside in giant flocks.
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