Well, no, but does anyone out there have a good idea of how to deal with situations like these?
For example, there is a woman who drives around my neighborhood leaving piles of bread scraps and seed on street corners on a regular basis. The pigeons and House Sparrows love her but the cars that park next to there get splattered, badly, all the time.
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.
Maybe simply ask her, after explaining the situation to her, to just do it in her yard or balcony?
And – as far as I know – bread ain’t good for birds anyway, no?
I agree with Nicole. It is the only way to go about it. Bit of a catch22 isn’t it? It’s good to see some folks feeding the birds (even though it’s more for the popular variety. e.g. in my area, crows and pigeons are fed because the former will eat anything handed out to them and the latter loves readily available seed).
Mediation is the only thing that can work. Probably show such people more effective ways and less intrusive methods of feeding (different) birds. Plus, residents also need to be a little more accommodating at times.
I had a situation like this a few years back. A neighbor was putting bread scraps out for a while and attracting the birds in my area that don’t need our help. Plus, if you’re not careful, these same birds, especially sparrows, will interfere with the annual bluebird nesting as they compete and win for nesting space.
Totally agree with you, Jeff.
It sounds like the situation has already been explained to her, as far back as 2009, and she can’t or won’t grasp why she’s not helping. With people like that, it’s not really about the birds, it’s about some kind of psychological drive to feel needed and important. If she were of a slightly different inclination she’d channel the same urge into hoarding cats or writing crackpot letters to the editor about some pet issue that matters to exactly no one else.
At her age, it’s probably too late to get her into counseling, and legal sanctions are probably just going to annoy the community (after all, she’s not some scary urban teen with her pants slung low, though in the long run her actions probably do more harm) so the best thing would be to somehow channel her into a group that does legitimate wildlife rescue work and let her volunteer in some limited capacity, framing it as “community service.”
@Carrie
Uh, we have those kind of people here (Kuwait) too, feeding stray cats. Not realizing that they just give them the opportunity to breed more and eventually die a brutal death when these same people leave the country.
Talking to them to ‘catch the cats, bring them to a shelter for neutering and then set them loose and maybe feed them’ is also pointless.
Humans are often quite strange 🙁
@Carrie
Sad but true. But your workaround suggestion is very possible. If only there are authorities who are willing to go out figure something out.
@Nicole
Feeding strays is quite common here in Mumbai too. Many don’t bother neutering them because of reasons beyond being obstinate – it takes effort (how am i going to take them to a shelter and back?), who is going to pay for the procedure (most shelters here are NGOs/NPOs that survive on donations), and i am actually feeding them because im earning brownie points with God or i just love animals but dont really care too much about the side effects of my actions.
Same goes for the people (in my country especially because of the lack of proper law enforcement) who like to own dogs. They have walkers take them out but no one will show the responsibility of cleaning up after them.
But, yes, you hit the nail on the head with the issue about responsible feeding and related care. I have learnt this from my volunteering stints with Welfare of Stray Dogs in Mumbai. Surprisingly, in spite of NPOs like this, the municipality does not recognise their work or accept the fact that neutering is a more humane way of keeping a check on population. (Sorry, I know this is not related to the question in Corey’s post.)
@Aristarkhos
‘Brownie points with God’ – I like that 🙂
Of course, taking them to a Vet and have them neutered will take money and effort. But so does feeding them 😉
One guy in my former neighbourhood complained that he goes through one bag of cat food a week. Uhm,….
We actually have one animal shelter here that started a program with – for now – one area of the city to catch, neuter and release stray dogs.
Like you, I wish that governments would take neutering as an option and sort of as a responsibility. But that’s a long stretch to go in this place where birds are shot during migration (and at all other times) in the hundreds….and where trash pollutes almost all areas 🙁
A wee bit off topic, yes, but I don’t think we will get shot for it – or at least, I hope not 😉
@Nicole
🙂 Well, one of the main reasons people feed strays or birds is for their some departed soul or to gain inroads to heaven. If I am not mistaken, crows are the ones that are sought after for feeding more than any other bird. You can imagine how those buffets turn out.
Oh, we don’t give strays any special food – it’s mainly scraps, bones, gizzard, chicken claw, left-over meat-rice combo, what-have-you. Plus, cats are less popular than dogs here. if you are a cat lover, friends might turn up their nose and if you house multiple cats in your house then you will be regarded as slightly eccentric. And neighbours generally don’t like such kind. They just tolerate you.
Same food for the cats too — scraps, etc. Cat food is much too expensive. Only those who can afford it will buy it — that too for their house cats. Or its milk – absurd assumption that it’s their staple diet. Much like the popular myth that snakes drink milk. And that’s another story altogether. 😀