VOA常速英语:Birds Connect People with Nature

Summer Askin started feeding birds just a few years ago, when he was in college."I just taking this class, ornithology, the study of birds, and I was just super into it.And originally I got one feeder, and I put it all the way up in this tree.I probably climbed like thirty feet so I could hang it right outside my window, and I got some close stuff, and I just wanted to keep going with it to see what else I could get.”
几年前萨摩·阿斯金开始饲养鸟类，当时他还在上大学。我只是学习了鸟类学——研究鸟类的这门课程，我非常喜欢它。最初我只有一个喂食器，我把它放在树上，我爬了大概三十英尺高，才能把它挂在窗外。我收获了一群亲密的家伙，我只想继续做下去看是否能有其他收获。

He got lots of birds, downy woodpeckers, northern cardinals, mourning doves, house sparrows and many others, and watching them was a learning experience.“You learn about the different types of, just how each species is designed differently like the way their toes are shaped so they can grip things differently.”Askin uses different shaped feeders to make it more adventurous for birds.
他饲养过很多鸟，绒啄木鸟、北美主红、哀鸠、麻雀等等，并且把观察它们当成一种学习经历。你会了解不同种类的鸟，每个种类的特征各不相同，就像它们的爪子形状各异而抓东西的方式也不同。阿斯金用不同形状的喂食器，这对鸟类更具冒险性。

“Most birds like a small sparrow can’t exactly stand on the side of a tree like a woodpecker can, you know, cause it gets its toes in there and it just climbs up.”
大多数像小麻雀一样的鸟不能像啄木鸟一样站在树干的一边，你知道的，因为它的脚趾在那里，它只能爬上去。

Askin spends about a hundred dollars a month buying birds’ seed. Wild Birds Unlimited is one of the stores catering to bird feeders.Michael Zuiker, whose run this business for 26 years, says some 53 million Americans enjoy the hobby.
阿斯金每个月花费大约100美元购买鸟食。“野鸟无限”是为迎合鸟类饲养者需求的鸟食商店之一。经营这项业务长达26年的迈克尔·泽维克说，约有5300万美国人享受这个爱好。

"Gardening’s the first, backyard bird feeding’s the second, and they pretty much blend into each other.It’s a hundred percent food so there’s no cleanup in the backyard.We sell 200 bags or about two tons of this every week.There’s a lot of reasons why people feed ,but I think one of the most important reasons is a very very peaceful emotional experience.”
园艺是首要的，后院喂鸟是第二，然后这二者相互融合。这是纯正的鸟食，所以后院不需要清理。我们每星期卖200包鸟食，大约2吨。人们喂鸟的原因有很多，但我认为最重要的原因之一是这是种非常非常平和的情感体验。

Paul Starzynski agrees, he picked up the hobby after he retired a few years ago.
保罗·斯塔辛斯基也同意这个说法，几年前他退休之后就开始有了这个爱好。

"If you sit quietly, you can, they come real close and you know they don’t, you don’t bother them and you can watch them,you can even see the little seed in there and their beak before they swallow it. It’s kind of fun.”Other customers take bird-watching to another level by counting the birds they see.
如果你静静地坐着，它们就会靠近，你知道的它们不会靠得很近，你不打扰它们，就静静地看着它们，你甚至能看到小小的种子，以及它们在吞咽之前会弄碎种子。这是一种乐趣。其他顾客则把鸟类观察带到另一个层次：他们会数鸟的数量。

"That data then gets put into the eBird account, which is a computer database, and very quickly you can find out what the species are doing,how healthy they are, which birds are migrating, which birds are not doing very well.”In exchange for a bit of seed or suet, feathered visitors bring color and beauty, and soft to millions of American backyards.
这些数据会被存入计算机数据库的eBird账户，然后很快你就会发现这些物种的动向，它们的健康状况如何，哪些鸟在迁徙，哪些鸟类表现不佳。人们给这些长着羽毛的客人一点种子或板油，这些长着羽毛的客人就会回报给百万计的美国后院色彩和美丽,以及温柔。

For Faiza Elmasry and Faith Lapidus VOA News.
VOA记者法伊扎·马斯利和菲斯·拉皮德斯联合播报。