I grew up feeding birds. It was always great fun to take bread, crackers, popcorn, or other edibles to a park, lake or refuge. The birds somehow knew who had food tucked away.
I vividly remember ducks and other birds gathering around me while I broke off bits of bread and crackers and fed them. I always tried to give the most to the ones I felt sorry for because of a broken wing, bent leg or other malformity.
I learned a lot about critters from those childhood bird-feeding excursions. I learned to recognize aggressive behavior because occasionally one of the birds would try to take the food from me or peck at me to get me to drop the food.
My Mom or Dad would simply stomp their foot and the malfeasant bird would back down instantly. Geese were particularly aggressive, and my parents would watch them the closest.
Safety was a matter of parental supervision. We didn’t expect the birds to act like anything but birds.
By the wonders of modern-day risk assessment and wildlife management, it is no longer permissible to feed birds at some of our local bird hangouts.
The Andree Clark Bird Refuge in Santa Barbara is one such place. It is a great spot to wander about and check out the birds, but the interactions I grew up enjoying and learning from is now considered wrongdoing.
Fortunately, out at sea, we still can feed birds. I have been chartered a number of times to take groups of birdwatchers out to sea.
On some trips we made the run to Santa Cruz Island to look for the island scrub jay or shore birds such as oystercatchers, but those weren’t the birds we fed.
On most trips we scout mid-channel to locate local and pelagic seabirds.
These winged hunters generally need to be brought into viewing range. Nothing seems to work quite as well as popcorn.
It is kind of funny when birdwatchers boarded my charterboat in the morning. They had their lunches, cameras, binoculars, species identification and log books, plus several huge bags of popped corn.
Popcorn is the best chum of all for many species of seabirds. When we began chumming handfuls of popcorn, birds seemed to appear out of nowhere. It was quite astounding how many different species of birds would wheel and dive around the boat.
Popcorn is tasty stuff, and this was amazing to watch.
After gathering dozens and sometimes hundreds of birds around the boat, everyone has an opportunity to log the birds new to them. Then we get underway and cruise at about eight knots with a great mixed flock of birds moving with us.
At times there are so many birds it looks like Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds” may have had it right!
The idea behind getting underway and bringing the birds with us by continuing to toss out popcorn chum, is that the birds present a different photographic profile when following along with a moving boat, than when flocking to a drifting and nearly stationary boat.
One thing is for sure. Those seabirds sure love popcorn. Too bad we can’t make the Clark Refuge birds happier. I would enjoy turning into a kid again and feeding them.