Sunday, September 26, 2010, 1:15 PM
The weather is a rainy 60 degrees, rather than the sunny 75 or so it was yesterday. As I was walking around today, I noticed a birdhouse attached to one of the trees outside of Eaton Hall, so I decided to snap a picture.
This got me wondering: who put the birdhouse there, and for what reason? I’ve never really understood the birdhouse as a concept. Birds can, obviously, make their own nests, so why do we feel we need to supply a house for them? And why do we provide birds homes but not, say, raccoons? Where are the faux fox burrows? What is it about birds that makes us humans think they need to be taken care of? They can fly; they can go wherever they want. It’s sort of patronizing of us to think they need our support with a little fake hidey-hole.
But on the flip side…birds are pretty. And I think that’s a pretty good case for putting a house up: so you can see more pretty things drop by.
1 comment:
Jay
Nice pics and really appreciate the farther removed perspective with the circle. The houses were pit up around 2003 by my Ecology class. We were partnering with a 5th grade class from Parrish Middle School who was learning about niches. The houses were constructed in teams of WU'sters and 5th graders at their school, then we placed houses on our campus and theirs. For many kids it was their first time on a college campus. And although we do have some natural tree cavities, we have many fewer than we might as most trees are not allowed much decrepitutde before they are removed or heavily 'repaired.' The houses fill in a few of this missing expected niche spaces for the chickadees, nuthatches, and couple species of swallow.
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