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Let me say that, in some strange way, I'm awed. A little background here: I grew up in New York City and, while still quite young, became a "birder." Watching birds in the 1950s was not an activity a teenage boy was eager to advertise, and yet, however quietly, with my best friend (and his uncle's borrowed binoculars), I did it in what remains a spectacular spot for birds in the spring migration season: Central Park. And sixty-odd years later, I'm about to do it again (just as I have in almost all the years between). So, think of me as a birder for life.
But speaking of life, I certainly haven't been spending my time reading about birds lately. How could I in this world of ours? I've been focused on the never-ending nightmare in Gaza (and the growing campus protests over it). And after all these months, it's still strangely hard to take in. Let me put it this way: when, in response to a devastating assault, one country invades -- you can't even say another country -- a tiny strip of land 25 miles long and packed with people, housing, hospitals, life -- and begins dropping 2,000-pound bombs (many provided by my own country), capable of destroying whole city blocks, on it; when it destroys at least 62% of all housing in the area (with more to come); when it kills at least 13,000 children (and that's undoubtedly an undercount, given all the bodies left in the rubble); when it wipes out almost all the hospitals in the area, uproots 75% of its inhabitants, cuts off food, water, and electricity to many of them, and" well, why should I even go on? You know the story, too, right? And even worse, the leaders of that country don't faintly consider themselves done.
And yet, in the last few days, I've also been living with the latest piece by TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon on Gaza -- and, yes, almost miraculously, on birdwatching, too. How strangely wondrous and deeply sad it is, especially for me! But let me say no more. Read it yourself. Tom
Celebrating Links Across Species
Amid a Nightmare of War
He's a funny little chap: a sharp dresser with a sleek grey jacket, a white waistcoat, red shorts, and a small grey crest for a hat. With his shiny black eyes and stubby black beak, he's quite the looker. Like the chihuahua of the bird world, the tufted titmouse has no idea he's tiny. He swaggers right up to the feeder, shouldering bigger birds out of the way.
A few weeks ago, I wouldn't have known a tufted titmouse from a downy woodpecker. (We have those, too, along with red-bellied woodpeckers, who really should have been named for their bright orange mohawks). This spring I decided to get to know my feathered neighbors with whom I'm sharing an island off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. So I turned up last Saturday for a Birding 101 class, where I learned, among other things, how to make binoculars work effectively while still wearing glasses.
At Birding 101, I met around 15 birders (and proto-birders like me) whose ages skewed towards my (ancient!) end of the scale. Not all were old, however, or white; we were a motley bunch. Among us was a man my age with such acute and educated hearing that he (like many birders) identified species by call as we walked. I asked him if, when he hears a bird he knows, he also sees it in his mind.
"It's funny you should ask," he responded. "I once spent almost a year in a hospital, being treated for cancer. I lost every sense but my hearing and got used to listening instead of looking. So, yes, I see them when I hear them."
Human-Bird Connections
I'm not expecting to convince everyone who reads this to grab a pair of binoculars and start scanning the treetops, but it's worth thinking a bit about those tiny dinosaurs and their connections to us human beings. They have a surprising range of abilities, from using tools and solving complicated puzzles to exhibiting variations in regional cultures. My bird-listening friend was telling me about how the song sparrows in Maine begin their trills with the same four notes as the ones here in Cape Cod, but what follows is completely different, as if they're speaking another dialect. Some birds cooperate with humans by hunting with us. Others, like Alex, the world-famous grey parrot, have learned to decode words in our language, recognize shapes and colors, and even count as high as six. (If you'd like to know more, take a look at The Bird Way by Jennifer Ackerman.)
We owe a lot to birds. Many of us eat them, or at least their eggs. In fact, the more I know about chickens, in particular, the harder it becomes to countenance the way they're "farmed" in this country, whether for their meat or their eggs. Most chickens destined for dinner plates are raised by farmers contracted to big chicken brands like Tyson or super-stores like Walmart and Costco. They live surrounded by their own feces and, as the New York Times's Nicholas Kristof has written, over the last half-century, they've been bred to grow extremely fast and unnaturally large (more than four times as big as the average broiler in 1957):
"The chickens grow enormous breasts, because that's the meat consumers want, so the birds' legs sometimes splay or collapse. Some topple onto their backs and then can't get up. Others spend so much time on their bellies that they sometimes suffer angry, bloody rashes called ammonia burns; these are a poultry version of bed sores."
Those factory farms threaten not only chickens but many mammals, including humans, because they provide an incubation site for bird flus that can cross the species barrier.
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