To feed or not to feed? I agree that “baiting” the birds for your own
selfish reasons is not right. Also, feeding a bird in a dangerous location
is out of the question, but whether to feed or not is a personal question.
I’m reminded of a parable:
One day a man was walking on the beach and in the distance he saw a figure
running back and forth from the water’s edge. As he approached closer he
saw that it was a boy and he was running up onto the beach, picking
something up, running to the edge of the water and throwing it into the
surf. Upon closer inspection the man saw that there were hundreds of star
fish lying on the beach. They had been washed ashore overnight. The boy
was picking them up one at a time and throwing them back into the ocean.
The man approached the boy and asked him, “What are you doing”? The boy
replied, “I am saving these star fish, if they are not returned to the water
soon they will die”. The man then asked the boy, “With so many star fish on
the sand, how can you ever hope to make a difference”? The boy stooped
over, grabbed up another star fish, ran down the beach to the water, and
flung it into the surf. Upon returning to where the man was standing he
replied, “I made a difference to that one”, and he continued his task.
For what ever reason we are experiencing an irruption of snowy owls. How
many owls have traveled farther south than normal? Nobody knows. Will they
starve and die during the winter here? If they survive the winter, will
they return to their breeding grounds and successfully breed or will they
die in route, or from a lack of food up north next summer, or from another
predator? We cannot tell these things. Will it make a difference if one or
two of these owls are fed thru the winter? It might make a difference to
them.
Remember we feed the birds for our own personal satisfaction, but maybe,
just maybe, we make a difference.
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