I've been puzzling for several days over how the words "bird-feeding" and "disrespectful" wound up in a quote attributed to me. I posted about this two or three days ago – the Mr. Fixit column in the StarTribune quoting me as saying it was disrespectful to feed birds, this in relation to a question about feeding pigeons.
Well, this morning at 5 'clock I awoke with the interview clear in my mind. I had moved the interview from pigeons to birds in general. And I expressed this thought: We feed birds for our own pleasure. It's disrespectful to birds to believe that they rely on us for food. They don't. They get along just fine on their own. Those comments just got a bit tangled when Mr. Fixit reviewed his notes. I've done that.
I'll add this: Birds would be better off without us. Take European settlers out of the North American picture, and we'd still have Passenger Pigeons, the Heath Hen, the Labrador Duck, the Great Auk, Bachman's Warbler, and you'd have to drive no farther than southern Illinois to see an Ivory-billed Woodpecker.
