The hummingbird was not going to wait for me to hang the feeder. On a cold morning in Western Washington, with uncommon snow on the ground, the male Anna’s wanted his sugar water, and now. As I walked toward the post, feeder dangling from a cord, he darted straight for the yellow plastic flower and buried his bill as I stood there feeling like I was being mugged by a creature weighing less than an ounce. I am an uneasy host: Anna’s hummingbirds are more frequent winter residents here due to warming temperatures and late-blooming non-native flowers. Aside from insects, there is no high energy food to support their intense metabolism during the winter. That’s why I got busted red-handed with a nectar feeder by a hungry hummer.
These interactions make some people feel special, selected from a crowd of ungainly, insensitive primates by an alien and delicate living thing. We transform the experience by subtracting the feeder and attributing the encounter to our inherent goodness, to some juju magic the animal must see in us. If we hunt, we pride ourselves on our power and grace as we harvest an animal from the plot of rich forage we planted to attract it; it wasn’t the food, but the fine shot that made the day. Artists are no more saintly than hunters; we lift the image of an animal from a feeder and carefully place it in habitat we viewed somewhere else.
But for the animal, it is all about food.
Here in America, the majority of people are at the pinnacle of the food pyramid, so well-fed we are dying of it and clinging to one fad diet after another. I am as guilty as any of indulging in “comfort foods” and mood-enhancing drinks. We can waste 30% of the food we buy, and feed pet animals and wildlife to boot. Many of us can fill bird feeders with fatty, protein-rich seed hearts and pour clean water boiled with sugar into a nectar container.
Black-headed grosbeak at a seed feeder
Far away, there are places where people would make a meal of that same seed and sugar water. For the malnourished person, feeding an animal involves a calculation: if I feed this animal, it will become my food, and it will provide me with more nutrition than what I feed it. There is no mystique, no ego, no pride, only practicality.
A Hoffman’s woodpecker feasts on a banana at a wildlife photography resort in Costa Rica
Food is a powerful tool of wildlife habituation. This tool is used by backyard wildlife enthusiasts, hunters, government wildlife managers, and even resorts specializing in wildlife photography. Concentrated sources of food- feeders, salt blocks, hay bales and rich stands of corn and clover- bring the most animals at once. Feeding may be an alternative to certain death: the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife feeds elk at set locations in the winter to keep them from straying into orchards where bullets will soon follow. Feeders may support backyard wildlife that would starve among sprawling housing developments with manicured yards. Animals tricked into overwintering by climate change may benefit from off-season feed.
However, wildlife habituation to food does not equate to magical bonding, and its costs can’t be subtracted from the human-wildlife equation. Competition for a rich food source can cause injury. Disease can be passed at a feeder like influenza on a crowded train full of coughing people. If there is no shelter from storms or a safe place to den or nest, animals and birds may die or sacrifice the next generation for easy meals. Predation increases: hawks have a distracted crowd of birds to pick from and crows may visit a feeder and then a nearby nest to eat another bird’s eggs.
A flowering lobelia attracts hummingbirds even in a pot
The Anna’s hummingbird that does not migrate may die if I stop feeding it, or if the weather returns to historic norms.
Habituating wildlife to a food source can be a problem for people, too. Garbage-conditioned bears in Yellowstone National Park were killed when bear-human conflicts rose after the Park Service suddenly changed policy and closed dumps. Hand-fed ground squirrels and chipmunks at Mt. Rainier steal food and bite people to get a bit of sandwich. Mountain goats charge people because some have let them lick the salty sweat off their arms, or fed them. Backyard feeders attract unintended visitors like rats, raccoons, and opossums: animals we view as pests that view our houses as their homes.
A “bad bear” lives the best life it can inside a fence at the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center. He will never return to the wild after habituation to human food, but at least he is alive!
Animals, though they feel more than we can bear to admit, are not human. Maybe the food bank, the food drop, the mission, or the refugee camp is more appropriate for people. We are too many to live in the wild and we don’t really want to live there anymore. Critters, even domesticated, will return to the wild if there is enough food, water, and shelter available. They will eat plants, bugs, slugs and each other happily, with room to avoid each other when necessary and to join together when there is benefit.
We can continue misinterpreting an abundance of animals or birds at a feeding area as a sign of plenty and health. We can pride ourselves on being a backyard St. Francis, a clever artist, an expert shutterbug or a premier hunter when we are just exploiting the tendency of resource-limited creatures to migrate to an easy meal. We can allow wild lands to be developed or fragmented to the point that they become empty and lifeless.
This young mule deer and its sibling stayed for a week, eating grass and wild shrubs that are adapted to browsing.
Alternatively, maybe we should stop destroying habitat. Maybe we should prize great tracking skills, the glimpse of an animal in nature, the patience to wait for a great picture or clean shot. If we want to capture wildlife in artwork and photographs, perhaps we should develop the skills and persistence to find them in the wild. If we want to hunt, maybe we should abandon the bait block, the crop stand and critter cam and learn to identify habitat, to track and to aim well. If we just want to enjoy wildlife around our homes, maybe we need to plant gardens, woodlands, hedgerows and wetlands for local and migratory wildlife.
A butterfly sitting on my pack as I ate lunch wasn’t a supernatural message. The insect was warming up on heat absorbing dark fabric on a chilly day, and likely taking up mineral from sweat.
For now, I will continue hanging nectar feeders for the Anna’s hummingbird that should have departed to Mexico for the winter, but perhaps hung on because the non-native bee balm flowered until the frosts arrived. I may have been his downfall, his fall deceit, so I will feed him this winter. But I will not pretend that his charming insistence on stopping me in my tracks means anything more than a demand for the debt of calories I now owe.
A snowy owl unwilling to become habituated during a rare wintertime visit to Boundary Bay, Delta, B.C.
Silver Snag Studio 