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Victoria BC recently imposed social distancing rules on wild birds. People are being told to pull down feeders, to ignore those birds now begging for food at t
by sandworm101 4y ago
Victoria BC recently imposed social distancing rules on wild birds. People are being told to pull down feeders, to ignore those birds now begging for food at the window. Good luck enforcing that rule.
- eloff 4y agoThat sounds like an article that should be in the Onion. Life imitating art.
- ryanklee 4y agoI've got to squint pretty hard to see this. Seems pretty mundane and non-satirical to me. Birds have viruses and bird sociality contributes to them. Just stands to reason that controlling contributing factors like bird feeders would be among the mitigation strategies.
- myth_drannon 4y agoP.E.I the same rules
- myth_drannon 4y agoIt's actually controversial rule for bird feeders. It's not conclusive that the bird feeders do more harm than help. Some research indicates birds living near bird feeders have better immune system and can cope with diseases better.
- sandworm101 4y agoI'm not sure it would even reduce their social distancing. Maybe being more hungry increases their flocking behaviors.
- sudden_dystopia 4y agoYes, but they can still spread it to birds that don’t have that benefit. So does that make them a more viable disease vector than if they just dropped dead?
- robonerd 4y ago> People are being told to pull down feeders, to ignore those birds now begging for food at the window. Good luck enforcing that rule. "Bird-feeder? No no, that's my squirrel feeder."
- nick_ 4y agoAn upside-down funnel on the pole (into the ground) solves the squirrel feeder issue :)
- wombatpm 4y agoExcept when the squirrels can leap and land on the feeder itself. There are few good squirrel solutions
- sandworm101 4y agoIt might slow them down a few minutes but they will figure it out. There is no such thing as a squirrel-proof bird feeder.
- klyrs 4y agoNot a stable one, anyway. A normal feeder, hung from a drone flying 50' over a field, is squirrel-proof until the battery runs out.
- sandworm101 4y agoFifty feet in the air, swinging below a drones ... such a feeder would also be bird-proof.
- klyrs 4y agobroke: pffft, a trifling concern woke: three drones, to stabilize the swinging, and hanging far enough that the noise wouldn't be a bother. bespoke: a 50' pole interrupted by a 500rpm lawnmower blade at about 15' up, and topped with a bird feeder. The only reason people think squirrel-proof bird feeders are impossible is because they don't want to harm the squirrels. (and, for the record, neither do I)
- steve_adams_86 4y agoI had no idea about this. https://www.cheknews.ca/public-asked-to-remove-bird-feeders-due-to-avian-flu-bc-spca-1024002/ https://www.cheknews.ca/public-asked-to-remove-bird-feeders-... My yard is crawling (hopping?) with birds all day, every day. I don't even have feeders, though. Victoria is bird country.
- colechristensen 4y agoI would just assume any source of food (say, an oak tree) would concentrate birds and not feeding them in one place just means they’ll go somewhere else. Trying to social distance wild animals seems to be the action of a bird brained bureaucrat feeling like they needed to do something with no evidence at all of it being effective.
- robonerd 4y agoIt seems like a manifestation of the old adage that when you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
- m0llusk 4y agoThe densities are completely different and result in different patterns of use. Bird feeders distribute large amounts of food from a small space. Large flocks of different types of birds gather at feeders and may fight for access. There is a big difference between a feeder having plenty of seed and a tree having maybe some bugs and seeds on its many branches.
- wk_end 4y agoHi fellow Victorian :) To my knowledge, this isn't a "rule" that's "imposed" or "enforced" by the city - the SPCA (which is not a government agency, just a non-profit) has just asked people to do it voluntarily.
- xemoka 4y agoAnother Vancouver Islander here, exactly as you say, there has been no "rules" implemented by anyone in any government position. This is the BC SPCA, a non-profit, asking people with bird feeders to take them down: https://spca.bc.ca/news/bird-salmonella-outbreak/ https://spca.bc.ca/news/bird-salmonella-outbreak/
- sandworm101 4y agoNot actually there myself but was speaking to family there about the issue. While it may not be a law enforced by cops, Canadians are generally pretty good about following announcements by groups like the SPCA.
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