Can you help me? 'would' confuses me.
First of all, how did we choose our topic? Well, there are four of us in the group and one day while we were discussing a possible focus, two of the group mentioned that they had seen yet more sparrow-hawks - one of Britain's most interesting birds of prey - in their own city center gardens and wondered why they were turning up in these gardens in great numbers. We were all very engaged by the idea of why wild animals would choose to inhabit a city garden. Why is it so popular with wildlife when the countryside itself is becoming less so?

Here is my question.

I think this sentence, "why wild animals would choose to inhabit a city garden", should be changed to "why wild animals chose to inhabit a city garden" because the wildlife chose to live in city garden and it means 'past' not for 'future'

Can you explain me? if I can't understand it.

Question

Can you help me? 'would' confuses me.
First of all, how did we choose our topic? Well, there are four of us in the group and one day while we were discussing a possible focus, two of the group mentioned that they had seen yet more sparrow-hawks - one of Britain's most interesting birds of prey - in their own city center gardens and wondered why they were turning up in these gardens in great numbers. We were all very engaged by the idea of why wild animals would choose to inhabit a city garden. Why is it so popular with wildlife when the countryside itself is becoming less so?

Here is my question.

I think this sentence, "why wild animals would choose to inhabit a city garden", should be changed to "why wild animals chose to inhabit a city garden" because the wildlife chose to live in city garden and it means 'past' not for 'future'

Can you explain me? if I can't understand it.

Answer

"Why wild animals chose to inhabit a city garden" is not correct because the question is not about a specific even in the past, but about habitual behaviour.
'Would' here is completely correct. We often phrase questions in this way to speculate on possible reasons for a strange phenomenon. 
For example, if you hit me', I could ask 'Why did you do that?' but I might also say 'Why would you do that?' to show that I am wondering about the possible explanation for an action that seems very strange to me.

Answer

it means what would cause them to do that. not what "did" cause it. the writer is curious about potential motivations.

Answers · 4

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