Dear Editor
It is more than half a century since Rachel Carson died; 56 years. Before that she had written several books, most notable Silent Spring. It made some impact at the time; she was a well-known U.S. journalist.
But who reading this will have heard of her? Who will have read Silent Spring?
It makes no difference now, for Silent Spring is here. It didn’t have to happen, but who can stop greed and indifference?
When I was a teenager “bird watchers” were a figure of fun. Those of us who spoke about the environment were dubbed “tree huggers.”
I used to buy bag after bag of birdseed. This winter I’m about to empty the third bag. Six chickadees don’t eat much.
There were red polls, purple finch, pine grosbeaks, nut hatches, woodpeckers, blue jays and pine siskins in the dozens at the feeders once.
We would watch for all the warblers passing through in the spring and fall, there might be visiting flocks of crossbills or flocks of immaculate waxwings so huge that, if they landed to pick grit off the driveway and something startled them so they took off all at once, the tumult of their wings sounded like a vehicle approaching.
My mother spoke of being woken in early morning by the dawn chorus, mostly robins. They once would be hopping in the dozens across the lawns searching for worms. Just as the numerous bats would whip over our heads at dusk as they devoured mosquitoes.
The loss of the wooden grain elevators doomed the English sparrow. Yes, it is an import, yes, it can be a messy bird, but it, like all the songbirds, plays a role.
I had a letter published in this newspaper a few years ago about scientists who were hired to monitor the busiest roads in England. Oh, there were birds along those highways, which teem with traffic day and night, but no nests. The reason? The birds could not hear one another’s mating calls. They did not mate, they did not nest. Their trills and warbles were drowned by the incessant roar of traffic.
I think it was in the 1970s that the late Muriel Corker wrote a column for the Maidstone Mirror. One spring she wrote about how it would be if the birds never returned in the spring. Our local correspondent, Helena Pike, always reported on the comings and goings of the birds. Not much to report anymore, not in the way of songbirds.
One of the reasons we lose hundreds and hundreds of eggs and fledglings is the overwhelming success of the predator birds. They are doing just fine. Statistics prove we lose thousands of birds every year to habitat loss, chemicals. smashing into high-rise buildings, being killed by windmills, but little is noted about predator birds.
Every farm has a gangster flock of magpies. A friend has trapped and killed more than 30. Unless one has bird feeders of the protected type, they will find a way of emptying them. They devour eggs and fledglings. So does the raven, which moved south to here in the 1970s. So do the raccoons, which literally unhook and damage bird feeders and ravish nests. They are not native, not cute, they carry terrible diseases and should be shot on sight.
With increased traffic road kill, there is a banquet for crows, magpies and ravens. No wonder they do well.
Another enemy of the songbirds is the squirrels, which have their place as a tree planter, but can also destroy nearly all the nests of the robins on a farmstead. Yes, squirrels are delightful. We had and orphan for a pet and we cherished him, but at present I would like a sharpshooter here to destroy them all. Two of my childhood companions were crows. For the first I made clothes (capes and hats) and the second one rode all over on my handlebars. The crow is a predator of duck eggs, but is not as prolific as it was years ago.
The feral cat is blamed for many bird killings. I admit I once shot a cat that was a bird killer. I couldn’t stand it. On the other hand, most of our cats seem indifferent and they are neutered cats, usually indoors.
I would remind readers, too, of a certain man of power who hated cats and ordered all the cats in Europe to be killed. The subservient population did just that. With nothing to keep down the rats, the Bubonic Plague spread and thousands of people suffered terrible deaths.
Another silence will be that of the frogs. Our mother would send the smallest child each spring to the old dam with a quart jar and instructions to fill it with a skein of frog eggs and water. She would put the jar in the south kitchen window and by and by little tadpoles would hatch and go scooting about in the jar. In a few days they would be returned to the dam.
For years and years the wonderful frog chorus would signify spring. Then about 12 years ago, the chorus began to lose voices. Last year, there was one solitary call, then silence.
The frog is like the canary in the coal mine. Farm chemicals? Something from oil wells? I’ll have the water tested.
We would walk to school past the neighbour’s hayfields and delight in the cascading call of the meadowlark. The hayfield is gone, the meadowlarks are gone (so are the neighbours).
Rachel Carson also wrote A Sense of Wonder, a book in which she wanted to people to make sure children never lost a sense of wonder, at leaves and lichens, moss and trees, water and birds, the moon and insects. (Insects? why, they are to be trod upon, are they not? Or poisoned, willy nilly? Just go into a store that sells garden supplies and see shelf after shelf of ant killers.)
How can a child see these things when so many are either indoors or in a car or not allowed to explore?
Who really cares about the disappearance of songbirds when they’ve spent their lives in apartment buildings in ever-spreading cities?
The loss of habitat has almost been applauded – the clearance of every tree, the draining of every water body. Often the people who have destroyed the most habitat will buy expensive bird feeders, so they can watch a few winter birds from the window and feel self righteous.
How about you? How many trees have you planted?
As I was still rolling this letter in my head, the latest issue of Canadian Geographic stated 2.9 billion birds have disappeared in North America since 1970.
Then an article in the Feb. 20 issue of Farmer Rancher from Nature Saskatchewan (of which I have been a member since age 15), written along the same lines, appeared.
Silent Spring is here. A sense of wonder has been replaced by an addiction to smartphones.
If people in general had listened to the tree huggers, it wouldn’t have happened.
Personally, I have little hope for the songbirds or shorebirds.
And to leave this continent for awhile, there are so many countries where evil men perpetrate constant warfare and I don’t expect the wildlife does any better than the desperate humans caught in a terrible situation not of their making.
Just like the songbirds of North America.
Christine Pike
Waseca
