Birds (grackles, sparrows and pigeons) fell dead by the dozens in downtown Austin Texas January 8/07.
Birds by the hundreds dropped dead in Western Australia three weeks before, crows, pigeons, wattles and honeyeaters, in the town of Esperance.
Two similar events in very different places far apart.
Now ducks are down in Idaho.
Lots of people are saying "What's goin on?"
Catastrophers say it is clearly the beginning of the end. Harder-headed boys and girls say it is all a part of the rich, if sometimes deadly, pageant of the natural world (shit happens).
Seems to me that the real importance of weird events like these is what they reveal about US. That person who sits beside you at work might have seemed just like you...until the birds fell from the sky (or were pushed) and she said "Oh no, that's how the end of the world begins" whereas you were thinking, " Freaky things are always happening in Australia and I'll bet they find some nasty chemical was released into the air in Texas ".
Dead birds, it seems, tell us something about ourselves that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.
Some of us have reacted to this pair of incidents with deep and persistent alarm. In this camp are those who saw in this strange happening an evil portent, a supernatural sign that the jig is up, the end is nigh, the show is over.
Others, just as deeply affected by the bird deaths, saw not the supernatural at play, but various scary albeit completely natural forces at work: a reversal of the earth's magnetic field, a deadly virus worse than any bird 'flu they had told us about so far, freaky weather events as a result of global climate change, toxins in the environment from man's continuing disregard for his own home, deliberate poisonings by a person or persons who think birds have no place in the scheme of things, diabolical terrorists, and more.
On the other end of a scale (for which I don't have a name) are those of us who have just smiled at the weirdness of these far-apart, bird droppings. We're sure it isn't the end of us or of the birds, we figure someone would figure it out, and we are pretty sure the explanation will be pretty ordinary, if not nice.
I would love to know the relative numbers of each type of response. Are we primarily deeply disturbed by such things? or are we primarily disposed to dismissing them as just weird?
The only conclusion I've drawn is this: there is a continuum of human response to such things, and not all of our responses are equally useful to our survival.
To come clean, while I try to show some respect for those at the alarmist end of things (well maybe, but...), I invariably come down on the dismissive, somebody-will-figure-out-what-happened-and -fix-it-side. And while I think that I and the other people who tend to respond as I do are an important safeguard or buffer against extreme action, I think in the end it is the people at the other end who provide a more important service to the human race. In short, we need doomsayers, alarmists, worriers, those who are deeply disturbed by events like the inexplicable death of hundreds of birds .
One day, they will be right.
This is not the conclusion I thought I would be writing here. I thought I'd come down in favour of my own rationalist tendencies (which of course are great for getting rid of the worries that plague people at the other end). I will probably go on being a hope-for-the-best kind of guy. I lack the capacity to worry about anything for very long. But I owe a debt to all that do. We all do. Not that all of them will be right, not by a long shot. But odds are they will be, soon enough.
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A pelican was found in the Comox Valley recently. Arrangements were made for it to be .... get this.... flown back to California where it belongs.
Rare brown pelican nursed back to health at bird centre Mary Anne Ocol, Comox Valley Echo
Published: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 Article tools
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Font: * * * * A rare brown pelican rescued off the side of a road in Oyster River late last year will soon return to its home in California.
It was spotted by Mountainaire Avian Rescue Society volunteers along Highway 19A in late November, suffering from hypothermia.
The female pelican was brought to the wildlife rescue centre in Merville where volunteers have been nursing her back to health.
"She's doing great," said wildlife rehabilitator Maj Birch. "The pelican is healthy and strong and her appetite is excellent."
Her appetite has been so good, in fact, that the bird has been eating 500 grams of fish per day, thanks to a donation of herring from Walcan Seafood.
The female pelican was one of several brown pelicans that have been spotted along the B.C. coast this winter, hundreds of kilometres north from where they typically reside.
It's suspected that the pelican flew north following the warm weather currents late in the fall and as fish typically follow these same warm currents, it's believed that the birds also followed, bringing several brown pelicans up the coast.
While the Comox Valley is not a common site to see brown pelicans, Birch said they have spotted them before in our waters.
Now, she is working on getting all of the paperwork in place to get the bird back on its way to California.
This includes obtaining permits from various governmental agencies including the U.S. Department of Agriculture; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife (the brown pelican is an endangered species in California); a certificate of health from the Canadian Food and Inspection Agency; and a permit from the Ministry of Environment.
The bird is scheduled to fly to Vancouver early next week where she will then board another plane to Los Angeles.
From there, she will be transported to the International Bird Rescue Research Centre in San Pedro, California where she will join others in a 90-foot pre-release conditioning pool.
Meanwhile, another bird was also recently returned home after having strayed far from its regular path.
A racing pigeon from Japan was spotted aboard the mast of a Canadian Coast Guard ship last fall, between Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands.
Like the pelican, it is believed that the pigeon also flew this way because of the wild weather patterns late last year.
"It was a healthy little bird, although a little hungry," said Birch when the pigeon first arrived at the centre.
Because racing pigeons are typically owned, they have bands with a unique number to identify them.
MARS staff located the number and tracked down the bird to an owner in Japan.
With the assistance of a Japanese translator and the Internet, they were able to return the bird to its owner, with costs paid for by the owner.
It is believed that the bird left Japan on Oct. 10 and arrived two weeks later in the Comox Valley.
mocol@comoxvalleyecho.com
© Comox Valley Echo 2007
You have some good thoughts here, Brian.
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