Stay Home, Freebird

At the start of spring, a not very bright robin built its nest right outside the kitchen window, located right next to the parked car and the air conditioning unit. For months my family tried to accommodate  it; the window wasn't opened lest we startle it (despite the heat in the kitchen), we avoided that side of the house altogether unless getting the car, and thankfully it wasn't hot enough to put on the AC or else we would've been in a pickle.

But there was the beauty of seeing a mother bird devotedly parked over her blue speckled eggs, and so it was a shock when one morning we found the nest was empty. The eggs hadn't hatched yet to our knowledge, and I hoped it wasn't a predator, but rather she had enough with the crummy location and relocated her brood.

I was telling this story over to a middle-aged neighbor.

"You could have done shiluach hakan," she said.

I was confused. "Why? We don't need the eggs."

"But it's a mitzvah," she said.

"Nooooo," I replied, "One only does shiluach hakan if they need the eggs so the bird won't be saddened to see them taken away in front of her."

She kept on insisting. "It's a chok."

"No, it's not. It's a matter of tzaar baalei chaim; one doesn't shoo away a mother bird just for the heck of it. What would that achieve? Less baby birds in the world? No chok has us interfere with nature."

"That's not how I learned it," she persisted.

"That's how I learned it," I countered.

Eventually she conceded, or pretended to. But I was concerned; are there people out there unwittingly and unnecessarily causing pain to the animal world? 

I looked up shiluach hakan in the Chumash (Devarim 22:6) and the Rambam says that it is regarding tzaar baalei chayim, meaning it is not a chok. 

"If a bird's nest chance to be before thee in the way, in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs, and the dam sitting upon the young, or upon the eggs, thou shalt not take the dam with the young; thou shalt in any wise let the dam go, but the young thou mayest take unto thyself; that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days."

Firstly, it is if one happens upon a nest, not having one prepared (Rashi). Secondly, the fact that the law is to not take the mother with the eggs shows that one only takes the young if there is a purpose to removing the eggs or chicks, such as for food. 

Rabbi Nosson Slifkin is very much against current chicken kapparos because the birds are usually incredibly mistreated in the process (locked up in trucks without water on boiling-hot days, wings  and legs broken by too much force). This maltreatment  is cruel,  and renders them unfit to eat afterward, which defeats the purpose. 

Once, a farmer would take a chicken from his own backyard, then bring it himself to the shoichet to prepare for the poor.  Nowadays there are probably all sorts of laws preventing those chickens from being consumed, so money would seem to be a better option for the poor anyway. 

My family happened to have never done chicken kapparos - a college classmate once asked me about the Jewish pastime of "chicken throwing." 

One should be very careful with the fowl.

Judaism was revolutionary because of its sensitivity to the pain of every living creature, man or animal. It would be incredibly disturbing if we give ourselves the image of the opposite.