The Birds at my Table

by Darryl Jones

  The motivations included in the second group were almost as significant to a large proportion of feeders but suggest several new and perhaps unexpected reasons to feed. For example, one respondent, identified only as “female, older” (defined as over 55 years) stated: “I live on my own, the children have grown up, I have no grandchildren, I have no job now that I am retired, I need something to nurture, to sustain life and watch life grow.” Given the reality that by far the largest demographic engaged in bird feeding throughout the world is “older females,”10 an element of nurture is undoubtedly going to be a major motivation. The role of feeding in the education of children had not previously been identified by other research but is clearly of great importance, and will be discussed in some detail later. Similarly, this was the first time that a form of “connection with nature” had been associated explicitly with the feeding of birds. This feeling or perception that people, especially those living in large cities, have somehow lost this connection with the natural world is of enormous concern at present. There is particular concern that this lack of direct engagement with nature among children may have serious implications for their future well-being as well as whether such children will appreciate the importance of conservation or value biodiversity. The feeding of birds may have a profound part to play in addressing this dilemma (see more later).

  Interestingly, the so-called Atonement motivation appeared to have been a relatively minor reason for British people to feed birds, although around one-quarter of respondents still rated it at the highest level of importance. For whatever reason, the respondents in this study appeared to see their feeding as benefiting birds directly, through enhanced likelihood of survival, rather than through the less tangible “making up for environmental damage” idea. The final motivation, “Companionship,” while of fairly modest significance, is both understandable and prosaic: feeding birds offers an important form of companionship, especially to people living alone. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know what I would do without them. I have to keep feeding them so that they will visit.”

  How Do We Value These Visits?

  The third exploration of the motivations we will discuss was also the most ambitious. Renee Chapman has been working with me on various bird-feeding projects for years, cutting her teeth on some of the first studies ever conducted on duck feeding.11 But these were strictly ecological and observational: How many slices of bread? Which species got the food? What is the water quality in the pond like? Counts, percentages, graphs; all neat and straightforward. “I had been trained as an ecologist and knew how to record what I saw,” Renee explains. But the more she watched the interactions between people and the birds they were feeding, the more she wondered about what these people were thinking and why they were doing it. “I eventually realized that I was actually paying more attention to the humans than the ducks! This was a bit disturbing because, after all, I was a red-blooded ecologist; I knew that people don’t matter!” This was obviously hyperbole but marked a turning point in Renee’s perceptions of what was going on with feeding. “This was not really about the amount of food or the species of bird involved. This was clearly about why people fed birds in the first place,” she continued.

  The pivotal moment in Renee’s transition from ecologist to—well, something else—was the arrival of a tradesman at a pond at lunchtime (also described earlier in Chapter 1). I still recall her vivid colloquial description of this encounter, soon after the event: “Here was a tradie in his flouro gear [Translation: tradesman wearing high-visibility cloth-ing], your typical tough-looking customer. He sat down on the grass and took out his lunch things. As he started to eat a sandwich, a couple of ducks arrived. I actually thought to myself: ‘Good luck with this guy,’ yet he then opened a container and started to hand-feed something to the closest ducks. I was astonished. When he had finished and was about to leave, I worked up the courage to go over and ask about the food he had offered. He said, proudly I think, “Cooked brown rice. Made it meself. Just for them. Lot better than bread. Me ducks seem to love it. Aren’t they just great?’”

  This was one of those little unexpected moments when things change, dramatically. Renee’s tradesman interaction, which challenged some of her preconceptions and personal theories, sent her off in an entirely new direction in terms of her research. Now she needed to really get into the heads of feeders, to try and discern what drove people to feed birds. Thankfully we had on hand a couple of experts—Helen Perkins and Monica Seini—in the approaches appropriate for this field. Renee was soon on her way to becoming a red-blooded ecological social scientist.

  Although it was clear that Renee would be investigating the motivations of feeders in Australia in greater depth than had been previously attempted, she was also keen to do something bigger. To me, there was a much more ambitious project waiting to be tackled: a comparison of feeding motivations between Australia and somewhere else. Not just to see whether there are differences—there will always be distinctions between any two places (a comparison technically regarded as “trivial”)— but because of the strong contrast in community and societal attitudes to feeding. As described already, Australia is one of the only countries in which feeding is frowned upon and everyone is aware of it. Nonetheless, people still feed in large numbers. Does such a context influence the reasons that people feed, compared to a country where feeding is actively encouraged? And because of the earlier work already conducted there, the United Kingdom was the obvious “other” place. With the enormous assistance of Jim Reynolds and the British Trust for Ornithology, Renee was able to temporarily trade Brisbane for Birmingham, Blue-faced Honeyeaters for Blue Tits, parched paddocks for a green and pleasant land.

  The data Renee used were obtained in ways familiar to us by now: a carefully developed online survey of hundreds of feeders from Australia and the UK, identical except for some culturally specific terminology.12 However, as this information was to be interrogated for its content (using techniques known as content analysis), people needed to be able to express themselves freely; this was not a “Which statement best describes . . .” type of survey. The key question (Q6) for us (there were 31 in all) asked simply: “Why do you feed wildlife?” (Of course, “wildlife” implies birds, but there are also plenty of bird feeders who offer a little something to hedgehogs, possums, foxes, and lizards.) For many social scientists, such broad open-ended questions are usually avoided; people often don’t know how to respond, we were warned, so many will simply will not write anything. It was a risky approach, but Renee didn’t want to manipulate or influence the answers. Maybe respondents would complete most of the survey but skip this one. You need somewhere over half to be confident that you have an acceptable representative sample, we were told. When the survey closed, Renee had 647 usable surveys from Australian feeders and 212 from the UK, with 99% and 98% completing the key Question 6 respectively! This level of response is almost unheard of. It seemed that people really did want to tell us why they fed birds, so much so that their answers often went on and on. “I had the opposite problem to what I had initially been worried about: too much good stuff!” said Renee. It was a problem worth having.

  With such a rich seam to be mined, it was time to delve in a different direction from that of previous studies. The various themes associated directly with feeding had been well described in studies from both Australia and the UK. Renee wanted to see how the detailed open-ended responses fitted with other dimensions of the relationship between people and wildlife. An obvious starting point for this kind of exploration were the “wildlife values” developed by Stephen Kellert from Yale University during the 1970s.13 In what was truly pioneering work for the times, Kellert attempted to clarify the many different ways that the people in the United States interacted with, regarded, used, and cared about wildlife in all its forms. After an enormous number of interviews with people from all walks of life throughout the country, Kellert discerned nine different dimensions to this relationship. He called t
hese “wildlife values” and explained rather technically that these were part of a multidimensional construct; any individual almost always “valued” wildlife in numerous ways and the relative significance of these could vary depending on the species and the situation. It was all too easy, he warned, to label someone as “being” of a certain value when this could change quickly. For example, consider a plausible relationship between a middle-aged US male and white-tailed deer, an abundant game species in the eastern United States. If this person was an experienced hunter, it would be easy to assume that he values deer in what Kellert called a “Dominionistic” manner, suggesting that his relationship with the species was primarily one expressing mastery of man over beast. In reality, our deer stalker might explain (if asked, though probably not in these words) that he, in fact, greatly values the deer from a “Naturalistic” perspective, having genuine respect for a magnificent animal in its natural world and gaining real satisfaction from the skills needed to successfully stalk his quarry. Once the deer has been dispatched, however, this hunter might value the venison thus obtained on a “Utilitarian” dimension of the relationship.

  While Kellert’s wildlife values have been very widely used—indeed both Lela Schreiber and Dave Clark employed them in their work—there has also been quite a lot of discussion and criticism over their applicability and misuse.14 Much of this debate is over whether his values are transfer-able to non-Western cultures and other contexts. While these are valid concerns, they are of little relevance to our discussion here. In her work, Renee has explained how she adapted Kellert’s values in her primary purpose of understanding the dimensions of the motivation for feeding in the two countries. Rather than describe all the findings in full, we will focus on the top four values found to explain the motivations in each country. Recall the very different societal backgrounds being compared. Renee and I are obviously disinterested and objective scientists, don’t forget, but we were both wondering just how different feeders’ motivations from the two countries were going to be. It’s tits versus lorikeets, siskins versus kookaburras after all.

  The first surprise was that the four dominant values (themes) describing the motivations of feeders were exactly the same in both Australia and the UK, although their order and significance were different. These values were Naturalistic, Moralistic, Humanistic, and Ecologistic-Scientific. Let’s tease this apart. First, a clear majority (79%) of feeders in the UK were strongly motivated by “Moralistic” impulses. This motivation is characterized by a strong ethic of care and personal responsibility for the birds they feed. Overwhelmingly, British feeders really care about the welfare of their birds; they want to help. Within this broad category, Renee’s analysis discerned two clear elements: motives of atonement and of support. Two quotations from UK feeders illustrate these sentiments. The first is that “the pressures placed on the natural world by humanity make it important for us to provide as much support to wildlife as possible.” The second, that “birds suffer during the winter due to a lack of food. Feeding helps more of them survive the winter.” The “Moralistic” motivation—helping—was also strongly evident among Australian feeders, though statistically lower in significance compared to the UK. Nonetheless, this value was second in importance in Australia, with 38% of feeders identified as such. This prominence was unexpected as most of the continent does not experience the harsh reality typical of Northern Hemisphere winters. Rather than annual winters, however, it was the less predictable but not infrequent climatic extremes—prolonged droughts, cyclones, excessive heat—so characteristic of Australia that seemed to motivate feeders. “I started [feeding] during the drought when there was no food or water,” said one respondent. “Birds visited [towns] in flocks, scavenging. I have kept it up ever since.” The most important motivation among Australian feeders, however, was classed under the “Naturalistic” value, and associated with 49% of respondents. Unlike the clear prominence (almost 80%) of the “Moralistic” value among UK feeders, there was a much more even spread of the main values in Australia, indicating that these were more equal in importance for most feeders.

  The “Naturalistic” connotation is one of enjoyment and pleasure in the interaction, a feeling of personal happiness in the presence of these wild visitors. Not unexpectedly, this value was second in importance for UK feeders, being identified with the motivations of 44% of respondents. Interestingly, this was the only one of the four top values that was not statistically different between the two countries.

  The other two values we are considering contrasted strongly in prominence between Australian and UK feeders. “Humanistic” motivations— which emphasize the relationship between feeder and visitor, the perceived connection with a wild creature and its importance—was much more significant among Australian feeders (27%) compared to those from the UK (11%). Again, this was something of a surprise, as was the depth of feeling evident among the responses. Consider these Australian examples: “To have the birds seek our company is salve for our souls,” said one respondent. “There is a certain trust established and there is an incredible feeling to such a close encounter,” said another.

  The final motivation is the dauntingly entitled “Ecologist-Scientific,” one of Kellert’s original values that had been subject to considerable revi-sion. For our purposes, this classification attempts to capture the more objective, dispassionate aspects of feeding, where the emphasis is on learning and observation rather than the personal experience associated with the “Naturalistic” or the overt caring of the “Moralistic” values. This orientation was much more prominent among UK feeders (38%) than Australian (15%) but, in both cases, was of much less significance to almost all feeders than the values associated with caring and relating. This aspect of the feeder’s motivation adds an element of curiosity to the more emotional experiences of being a feeder.

  There was much more as well—elements of aesthetic appreciation of the beauty of the birds and of the value of companionship, for example, but these were of considerably less importance to the majority of feeders in both countries. What this fascinating investigation tells us with great certainty is that many people are motivated to feed by a number of powerful internal influences, with the need to assist the survival of birds, along with the personal reward of the experience, being especially strong. In addition, feeders and their birds were often engaged in terms of both relationships and fascination. Australian and British feeders, despite the culturally differing backgrounds, were remarkably similar with regard to the four dominant dimensions of their motivations but differed markedly in terms of what mattered the most. For Australian feeders, all four were expressed without a clear leader, while British feeders were activated much more by motivations of care and support.

  How Much Do You Care, Really?

  Renee had another means of gaining even more insights into the personal world of the feeder. This approach was as overtly quantitative as the Kellert values were qualitative. Because of the predominance of caring, enjoyment, and engagement emerging from the earlier studies of feeders’ motivations, Renee wondered whether there was a way to objectively assess whether feeding enhanced participants’ perception of a connected-ness to nature. The apparent loss of a sense of belonging to nature, or even the relevance of nature to contemporary human life, is becoming of increasing interest and concern. With the majority of people now living in rapidly expanding cities throughout the world, the opportunity to interact with natural landscapes or even to observe wild animals is becoming less and less possible. The world many of today’s children will in-habit is likely to be even more ordered, filtered, and domesticated. Direct experiences of nature are progressively being replaced with indirect or even artificial replicas of the real thing. This process has been termed the “extinction of experience” and has been linked to all manner of future dystopias.15 Why should tomorrow’s citizens care about conservation or national parks when they have the David Attenborough documentaries on YouTube?

  These concern
s have generated numerous attempts to distill the essence of people’s personal attitudes, beliefs, opinions, and actions into a measure—a specific number perhaps—that represents where they stand on a continuum of values. This is effectively the opposite of Kellert’s multidimensional values approach but can be of great value in mapping the trajectories of societal views and perspectives on all sorts of issues. This is the realm of “scales,” in which one’s responses to a long list of statements can show you where you come in relation to others, or at least the 12 other people who have taken part in a particular study. (I recently found myself coming in at 0.52 on a 0–10 scale of visual art appreciation. I still don’t know what to think about that.) In relation to what may be called our connection with nature, there are now a number of well-developed scales that purport to provide reliable measures of dimensions such as environmental awareness, concern for nature, and “belongingness.” These scales include the Connectedness to Nature Scale, Inclusion of Nature in the Self Scale, and the New Ecological Paradigm Scale, each of which has been employed widely and, inevitably, scrutinized ruthlessly.16 Some have proved to be accurate in predicting involvement in environmental activism and long-term commitments to demanding activities such as raising orphaned wildlife.

  Renee had to wade her way through a vast and dense literature that explained, defined, critiqued, and sometimes ridiculed these scales, getting increasingly confused and frustrated. Eventually, she came upon a reference in an article to a very new scale that appeared to be heading in the right direction. Renee knew that she needed a scale that tapped into the intimate, undoubtedly emotional aspect that was salient in the “caring” and “relationships” dimensions of the feeding experience. This was crucial since most of the other scales appeared to be primarily aimed at cogni-tive dimensions, the more objective, factual, “science” elements. Although the name of this new scale, the “Love and Care for Nature Scale,”17 was a little off-putting, it claimed to reliably measure “love and caring of nature, including a clear recognition of nature’s intrinsic value as well as a personal sense of responsibility to protect it from harm.” This was just what Renee was looking for, though we needed to be convinced that is would be suitable. At least as important, she needed to be able to use the scale herself, but some researchers were very protective, or demanded large sums to gain access to the test items that the participants respond to. Nonetheless, Renee decided to find out more.