Because We Care

by Bobbie Poor
April 2008

People who work with animals have been taught not to be anthropomorphic. Give a wild creature a personal name, it is said, and it loses its wildness. Give it a name and one will care too much for it. Let’s think about that. Isn’t “to care” a good thing?

At our feeder this morning, there are Mabel, Pop and Bullyboy. Sissy pecks hopefully on the ground, ignored by her cardinal parents, while Bullyboy stuffs himself with their approval. Flit and Flash wait to dash, in chickadee fashion, for a morsel while Greyshanks, a squirrel, gleans crumbs that drop from Mabel’s beak; Paul Bunion, the resident Pileated Woodpecker, hammers with determination on a dead birch. The tree is his pantry, his playground and cell phone. We leave it up for him.

An owl may snatch Greyshanks to feed her hungry chicks. A Cooper’s Hawk may pick off a hesitant titmouse from the feeder. They, too, must partake of Nature’s bounty to survive. Nature is neither good nor bad; it simply “is.” Our backyard, a sort of feathered version of “Meerkat Manor,” illustrates this. Still, we can’t help it.

We care.

And caring so much for our avian visitors means we will care about providing native plants for their real food; about keeping waters in our lakes, rivers and aquifers unpolluted for all creatures to drink; about working to assure clean air for all to breathe and fly through; about offering poison-free insect populations for wild birds to feed their babies.

So go ahead. Give your backyard birds names. You care. You will make a difference.