Feeding the birds used to be considered something that raised the spirits and gave something to the world.

Now bird feeders find themselves being fined, arrested, or even imprisoned, under new powers that allow councils to ban any activity they disapprove of.

A lady was filmed last week being arrested for feeding the birds in Harrow; she was crying in handcuffs, surrounded by no fewer than six police officers and two council enforcement officers.

The man taking the video asked the officers: ‘who is the victim of this crime?’, and answered ‘the council’. He was quite right.

The woman had breached a Public Spaces Protection Order, a law that can be created by a single unelected council officer, without any democratic process or public consultation. These laws allow council officers to criminalise any conduct they think has a ‘detrimental effect on the quality of life’.

This is a low benchmark, leading to bans on silent prayer, standing in groups, picking up stones, climbing trees, or swearing – and in many cases feeding the birds.

Our 2022 survey found that six councils had banned feeding birds or animals: this number would be much larger today. In 2023, three councils issued penalties for feeding the birds.

But other powers have been used to target bird feeders too. We’re in touch with several members of the public banned from feeding the birds in their garden. One woman said that the council asked neighbours to monitor her bird feeding:

The council has been asking neighbors to film inside my garden, which they have been doing by climbing ladders and looking through gaps in the gates, and audio monitoring equipment was taken into next door to monitor me. They have viewed the inside of my property from the outside, and all this surveillance is quite intense and effected my mental health.

This level of surveillance would be suitable for someone suspected of drug dealing or some other illegal activity; not a lady who occasionally puts out bird seed.

Another man had to endure a year long legal battle to appeal his order restricting bird feeding in his garden. The council had tried to tell him exactly how he was allowed to feed the birds:

My order stated that future feeding should be ‘limited to scattering small amounts of crumbs and seed’. What is a ‘small’ amount? This goes against the recognised, UK wide guidance for feeding birds in your garden as published by The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, but also the law of the land.

And perhaps the worst case was that of a pensioner who was imprisoned for feeding the pigeons, after he broke a civil injunction ordering him not to. He was treated like a hardened criminal:

I was taken away in a prison van, in solitary because of covid, and held with nothing in a cell for 10 days. In prison I nearly died – I had a doctor and nurse check my blood pressure every day because they said it was the highest they had ever seen and it was critical they bring it down. The sentence was 15 weeks, and I was released after 11 weeks. I was very ill, and I didn’t return to the flat because I had lost that, so I stayed with a friend.

The man is now being threatened with prison for a second time, after being issued with a Criminal Behaviour Order and several Community Protection Notices banning him from feeding the birds on his local beach.

(Our research that examined court records found that a second man has also been imprisoned for feeding the birds).

This persecution of bird feeders is – as the Harrow bystander pointed out – a victimless crime. No one is harmed or inconvenienced by someone throwing a few seeds or bits of bread to the birds. What is being punished is not a violation of other people’s rights, but rather the disobedience of an official order as to how we should behave.

This is not a real crime – which is why bird feeders must be defended, and these busybody orders scrapped.