Restorative interlude

I am reading Marylinne Robinson’s essay on altruism while sitting on my front porch. The noises around me are the syncopated symphony of dove calls, the dull noise of a distant freeway that sounds, from this remove, like a water fall, the sussurration of a neighbor’s sprinkler hitting the leaves of a magnolia tree, the chattering of an annoyed squirrel, and the occasional doplerian noise of a passing car. Noticing the birds (mostly doves and house finches) gathered in the vicinity of an empty feeder, I am moved to go inside to fill the feeder. And then, given the essay I’ve been reading, to speculate on my motives in doing so. The most obvious proximal cause is that a dove is sitting on a nest in the crape myrtle from which depends the feeder and I think she will need food for the young one to come. After filling the feeder, though, when I notice the red head and front of a house finch that swoops in and enjoying the splash of color, I realize that perhaps the pleasure of seeing the birds in their colors and interesting behaviors around the feeder also inclined me to fill the feeder and so attract them to my purview. The fact that I can speculate on my motives without changing my actions seems significant to me, and something that no theory of altruism I have read satisfactorily explains–or, for the most part, even acknowledges.
There is now a messy, cawing grackle on the feeder, scattering more seed to the ground than he consumes, and without any need, as far as I can see, for making noise, since no other grackle is around. Is his scattering the seed, which makes it easier for the ground-feeding doves to get food, also altruistic? Or just a side-effect of his own pursuit of food? A sparrow with a black patch on his front is now on the ground picking up a seed or two before flying off at the approach of a cowbird. Doves are starting to gather in the branches of the tree above the feeder, one squeaking like a door hinge that needs oiling. Funny, I’d never thought of doves as making that kind of noise.