by Darryl Jones
With no new customers around, Camilla is only too happy to chat. “Of course the tourists love to see the birds, but this is not why I feed them. At home in Seville, there was no nature. It was all concrete and cars. There were no birds but pigeons. I wanted somewhere my children could see that there are still beautiful natural places. When we bought this café, it was just a way to make money. I had no idea that all these birds were around. When I saw the feeder I just didn’t know what to do with it; we had never fed birds in Spain. But the previous owner explained that many of the people who came to this café were here to see the birds. It was part of the business. So at first I just put out the seeds and didn’t think much about it. But now it means so much more to me.” Soon after her family had arrived, Camilla describes how her six-year-old daughter came rushing inside early one morning before the café was open. “‘Mama, quickly! There is monster in the garden!’” Camilla tells me her daughter said. “I now know that it was a cassowary,” she says, “but neither of us had ever seen a bird so huge and so beautiful. It seemed impossible that something so wild could be just there, in our yard. We both just sat down and watched for ages. I then noticed that it was picking up the spilled seeds from the feeder above. I very slowly went and got some grapes and tossed these out onto the lawn. The bird took no notice of us, gobbled the grapes, then just walked back into the forest. It was just amazing. That morning seemed to change everything. I started to learn more about the birds in this land.”
Some months earlier, this region had experienced the effects of a major cyclone, with considerable disruption to settlements along the nearby coast. While the damage to buildings, bridges, and roads had been considerable, there was also massive destruction to great swaths of the rainforest. Although many trees had been blown over, what was much more serious was the amount of fruit that had been destroyed. The storm had hit the area at the peak of native fig production, decimating the natural food crops that many rainforest birds rely on. Big birds like cassowaries were particularly hard hit. Throughout the region, these normally secretive birds of the deep jungles began to venture out looking for food. In several communities, people got together to supply fruit for the starving birds, although even this helping hand proved controversial. Inevitably, as more and more cassowaries began to wander into the towns, there were several vehicle collisions and even dangerous interactions between birds looking for food and people, including tourists and others who did not realize what was going on. Pro- and antifeeding factions formed, sometimes between neighbors and within families. These tensions continue to this day. In the parking lot outside the café, bumper stickers declare: “A fed cassowary is a dead cassowary.”
Camilla’s café is some distance from the coast and, although the cyclone was a lot less destructive up here, the impact on the frugivorous species was clear. It was when rarely seen birds such as Rose-crowned Fruit-Doves—strict fig eaters—began to turn up at the feeder to peck at the sunflowers that Camilla decided that her menu needed major revi-sion. The response of the birds to the colorful smorgasbord of fruit, some grown in the garden below, was immediate; all sorts of species began to partake. “But we do have some rules too,” she explains. “The tourists like to see the birds. Of course. But the feeding is really for the birds. If the weather has been kind, I put out just a little food, and only three times a day. It is soon gone and the birds have to go back to the forest where they can find their own food. After big storms, though, I know they are hungry, so they will get a little more.” Throughout this lively exchange I said rather little. Once Camilla realized that I was genuinely interested in her story—and that I seemed unlikely to be critical of her feeding (“Some people can be very rude about what I am doing,” she says)—she was only too willing to tell me all about her experiences as a bird feeder. “This is really important to me,” she stated earnestly at one point.
The café’s door chimes announce the arrival of more customers. Camilla disappears inside leaving me to consider what she has been saying, the various dimensions of her narrative. There is a lot to consider: cultural adjustments, a willingness to learn, the wonder of new discoveries, recognizing need, and then responding appropriately, even coping with criticism. But shining through it all was the expression of enthusiastic caring. I am certain that Camilla would dismiss my academic dissections with a vibrant laugh, saying something like: “Oh, you scientists just make things complicated.” But while her remarkable story can hardly be regarded as typical of most garden bird feeding, I am more convinced than ever that almost all of us engage in feeding for a complicated web of reasons, even though we might simply say: “I just like birds.”
Letting People Tell Their Story
As with so many other aspects of this journey, an initial attempt to tease apart the motivations people have for feeding wild birds started some time ago with a particularly insightful student. Peter Howard was an experienced social scientist who became interested in trying to understand what people thought about a range of human-wildlife interactions and conflicts. These included home invasions by animals such as possums and snakes or attitudes to feral dogs and foxes in urban areas. These interactions tended to be fairly negative, so Peter was pleased to include bird feeding as something much more positive. While I might know how to catch a kangaroo or radio track a koala, Peter was skilled in what I regard as an exceptionally difficult task: how to talk to people, anybody, and somehow get them to really open up. And not just talk; as Peter tried to explain patiently numerous times, it was important to get people to talk without them simply “saying what they expected them to say.” As I have come to appreciate, it is all too easy to bias the answers of your participants simply by wording the question the wrong way. Asking someone whether they feed birds immediately after a question about with how feeding may harm birds, for example, is unlikely to lead to reliable answers. Peter’s genius was in establishing settings where people felt relaxed and free to be honest and unhindered in their responses: “Just letting them tell their story,” as Peter described it. This could be in a face-to-face interview, a chat over the phone or in the way questions in a survey are worded and constructed.
Peter’s study (completed in the early 2000s) has been widely cited because, remarkably, this was the first time that anyone (as far as we could tell) had systematically asked people who fed birds to try and explain why they did so.1 Although there had been a number of studies of the practices and scale of bird feeding by then, the motivations behind feeding were still unclear. Obviously, there were plenty of informal and anecdotal explanations around, but we wanted to know what the feeders themselves thought. In the absence of any prior findings, Peter initially spoke to a number of wildlife professionals with some experience on the topic to ascertain the general issues that needed to be canvassed. The next step was to speak to a selection of feeders directly. About 20 people were recruited through advertisements in the media, and Peter chatted at great length with these feeders. This was a crucial step because it soon became evident that many were extremely skeptical about our motives. As explained earlier, the clear although unofficial “official” stance in Australia is that all wildlife feeding is bad. This was something every feeder was very much aware of. Was this apparently friendly bloke who wanted to ask about feeding part of some tricky government trap? I am being perfectly serious. Although no private feeder had ever been prosecuted, the ubiquity and determination of the semiofficial antiwildlife feeding stance has plenty of people deeply concerned and suspicious.2 Once Peter sensed this concern, his approach changed to one that emphasized that his aim was to assist feeders in caring for “their” birds. It took some time but this approach eventually worked, with many of these people becoming sufficiently convinced that they were able to encourage their friends to participate in the next stage of the project, a detailed mail survey. Over 150 people completed this questionnaire, and once the replies had been received, Peter and I hosted an informal gathering of about 40 of the participants where we pr
esented our findings and, again, listened to the feeder’s responses. This was an extraordinary evening to which we will return shortly.
Although the survey covered a number of familiar topics (food used, main concerns, favorite species, etc.), a key question asked feeders to describe, in their own words (a very important aspect of this type of research), their motivations for feeding wild birds; they could give as many reasons as they liked. A critical part of Peter’s evaluation process involved carefully considering the responses in order to identify general categories for the reasons being expressed. After considerable deliberation, Peter decided that there were five main reasons overall, with most feeders mentioning at least two. Looking back at these results, I am reminded of how mundane and obvious some things were while others were entirely unexpected.
By far the most frequently cited reason for feeding birds—mentioned by over 75% of respondents—was along the lines of “It makes me happy.” That was hardly surprising, and made for a nice uncomplicated dominant category: “Pleasure.” Other reasons were categorized as “Educative” (about 30%), with feeders indicating that they were able to learn about the birds when they visited, and “Attracting” (23%), where an important reason for feeding was to bring the bird into view in order to observe them more closely. These were all generalized reasons for feeding we had suspected and would be expected of feeders anywhere in the world. It was the second-most-frequently mentioned group of responses, however, articulated by almost 40% of feeders, that was entirely unexpected. Peter deliberated over what to call these responses before settling on the label “Atonement.”3 Based on the detailed written responses but especially the passionate expressions some people used to describe their concerns to us during the postsurvey debriefing, this was by far the most significant reason for their feeding. Typical statements were: “Humans have destroyed so much of the natural world, I am trying to give something back”; and “We have taken away their homes and poisoned their environment yet they still sing for us. It makes me ashamed of what we are doing, but putting out the food may help.” Whether these are responsible or even sensible statements is beside the point. They are strong and powerful sentiments and evidence of deeply held convictions. Sure, it’s nice to see the birds up close, admire their colors and feel happy (these people seem to be saying), but there are also serious environmental issues to confront. I might not be able to stop human development but I can put up a feeder and the birds will come. At least I can try to do something!
This modest but important exploratory study marked a significant turning point in my interest in bird feeding. I suddenly realized that this “mere pastime” was often much more than simply a way for people to “pass the time.” Much earlier, my perception had been that bird feeding was a fairly casual, private, and passive affair, the equivalent of daytime television but without the contrived drama. To discover that large numbers of people were feeding and that many of them had strong, often ethical convictions and felt they were engaged in a form of environmental activism was a major revelation. Moreover, far from being passive, feeding for many participants involved direct and active participation. Above all, these people (admittedly a smallish sample from one small part of a country that doesn't even like feeding) seem to really care. Peter’s study only hinted at the complexity that was to come.
The Many Dimensions of Motivation
It has taken a while, but there have finally been several significant investigations into the complex motivations of bird feeders. Unfortunately, despite the colossal scale of the bird feeding industry in North America and continental Europe, there has been relatively little research conducted on most aspects of what is probably the most important human-wildlife interaction in these regions. Certainly there have been excellent studies of who is feeding, where and what, on the movement and behavior of birds at and between feeders, even fascinating new work on the monetary value people place on birds in gardens.4 To my knowledge, however, no one has yet investigated the motivations of feeders from most parts of the world. This means that we currently cannot be definitive about the particular motivations of feeders from anywhere other than the United Kingdom and Australia right now. While I am certain that many of the findings we discuss here will be of relevance everywhere, regional differences are certain to exist. Do the feeders of Manitoba feed for the same reasons as people in New Mexico, Lithuania, Malta, or South Africa? We await these future studies impatiently.
One important exception to the dearth of US studies of these matters is a remarkable investigation of people who specifically feed crows.5 This is not typical garden bird feeding but is certainly worth mentioning in the current context. During his many years of studying American Crows around Seattle, John Marzluff encountered numerous individuals who regularly fed crows, often in particular locations and in very particular ways.6 It slowly became clear to John than this was not a regular human-wildlife interaction; something special was happening. Teaming up with social scientist Marc Miller, the two carefully observed the often complex interplay between person and crow. The researchers distinguished two categories of crow feeders. One group, crow observers, were mainly interested in the behavior of the birds and were somewhat detached in their interactions. For the other group, in contrast, the researchers did not hesitate in naming as “crow friends.” These people intentionally attempted to communicate with the birds through a wide range of gestures and vocalizations. And this was most definitely a two-way exchange: the crows also appeared to be attempting to communicate with the people. For these crow friends, offering food is far more than supplying a little sustenance; it also allows for shared gestures, intimate yet indirect connection, mutual regard. The authors make a provocative claim: that this is a form of genuine relationship, founded on but extending far beyond just feeding.7 Relatively few of the species we feed seem interested in this type of commitment. I am not at all surprised to learn that crows just might be.
Our current understanding of the motivations for feeding garden birds comes mainly from just four investigations conducted within the past few years. Each differed in approach and offer quite varied insights. They also covered much more than motivation, though that will be our focus here. The first and simplest study, by Lela Schreiber, was based on an online survey of several hundred members of the British Trust for Ornithology.8 This study was directly influenced by Peter Howard’s pioneering work, with respondents being asked to nominate which of a list of six major reasons best explained their motivation for feeding. This forced participants to choose among some of Peter’s categories as well as several others devised to be more appropriate to Britain. As with the earlier study, “Pleasure” topped the list, with 83% of respondents ticking this box. Significantly, the second-highest response (77%) was for “Aid survival,” a topic not even mentioned in the Australian study. The third-most-frequent (60%) reason nominated was “Studying behavior.” Peter’s crucial “Atonement” category, reworded as “Making up for environmental degradation,” came in fourth but was still an important concern for over 40% of respondents. Like the earlier study, this British work showed clearly that feeders were motivated by a broad mixture of influences, though there was also broad correspondence between the two countries.
Dave Clark was influenced by the two earlier studies, but he took his work into entirely new territory.9 Dave is an experienced social science researcher with a background in marketing analysis. (He is also a keen cyclist, feeder, and birder who has guided me through the unexpected biodiversity of inner London on several occasions, as mentioned in Chapter 7.) When he decided to expand his skills and interests by undertaking a master’s in ornithology at Birmingham University a few years ago, his lecturer and research supervisor, Jim Reynolds, suggested that Dave devote his considerable energy into discerning the mysteries of bird feeding as the research component of the course. This was exactly the sort of methodological challenge Dave thrived on. His plan was to incorporate both qualitative (subjective themes and meanings) and qu
antitative (all numbers and statistics) approaches in an attempt to uncover underlying patterns in the reasons people gave for their feeding. This was achieved by lengthy interviews with 30 feeders followed by an online survey, to which over 550 people from throughout Britain responded. To gain the necessary information from the interviews, it was essential to the qualitative analysis used that the participants not be influenced by the views of others (including the researchers) and that they were able to tell their story openly. From their responses, Dave was able to identify 8 different categories as reasons for feeding. These were then incorporated into the survey questions for the quantitative phase. Dave told me that while he was obviously aware of Peter Howard’s categories, he was able to put these aside and allow the “data to speak for itself.” “It’s quite straightforward once you have some experience,” Dave explained. “And besides, this was not much like Brisbane [the location of Peter’s study].” Through the misty window we could see a lone bedraggled Blue Tit pecking at Dave’s almost empty feeder, a cold drizzle settling in. I had to agree.
Dave’s categories—the motivations or reasons given for feeding by bird feeders in the UK—are listed below in three groups indicating their relative importance.
Group 1: Pleasure; Bird survival
Group 2: Nurture; Children’s education; Connecting with nature
Group 3: Making up for environmental damage; Companionship
These groupings offer a fascinating insight into the otherwise private attitudes and influences that lead people to feed birds. The two motivations that make up the first group—pleasure and assisting birds to survive— were entirely distinct from one another but were both of overwhelming importance to almost all the respondents. Or maybe it simply feels good to know you are helping birds survive. I suspect these elements would be very difficult to separate.