For The Birds

It’s the day after Christmas and I am asking myself why I am so dumbfoundingly optimistic.

It is no longer illegal to negligently kill migratory birds. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act prohibits killing migratory birds without a license. Up until recently, the law was interpreted to mean that birds killed as a result of oil spills, destroying their habitat, or otherwise interfering, resulted in federal prosecution and fines.

No more. You can still be prosecuted if you intentionally kill a migratory bird without a license, but not if the bird happens to be killed in the pursuit of some other goal. For example, an eagle killed by a wind turbine used to be subject to a $15,000 fine, oil spills that killed thousands of shore birds resulted in massive fines, projects that destroyed nesting grounds were subject to fines and injunctions without some mitigation such as providing an alternative nesting environment. Today none of that applies if you are operating a wind turbine, shipping oil, or paving nesting grounds into parking lots but your goal is making money rather than killing birds. (Detail here.)

This saddens me because seeing eagles turning circles over Ferndale, snow and Canada geese in the fields of the Nooksack valley and flats, and ducks in almost any body of water in Whatcom County all remind me that the world we have all been given is magnificent.

I’m not squeamish about killing birds. My dad encouraged my cousins and me to shoot English sparrows and starlings when I was a kid. He was not sympathetic toward invasive species, although we immigrant Germans and Dutchmen were invasive tribes ourselves.

Duck and goose hunting were all part of the grand tradition when I was in junior high (middle school.) In the fall, a bloodthirsty knot of boys would gather before first period and talk about who shot what that morning out at Tennant Lake and the innumerable ponds that surround Ferndale. I wished I were among the guys who were out wading in the cold and wet while hunting game birds, but my dad wanted me helping with milking, not messing with exciting and dangerous weapons.

He hunted himself when he was young. The few times I saw him fire a gun, he hit his target accurately. He was not sentimental about animals, but he was always on the watch for signs of wildlife around the farm and I suspect that, all things equal, he was on the side of the ducks, geese, and pheasants.

Think about the law for a minute. Who kills birds intentionally? These days, almost entirely sport hunters. I have nothing against hunting. It’s no longer my choice for recreation, but sport hunters guard our wildlife more carefully than a lot of sentimental enthusiasts who only think about wildlife occasionally. Hunters cull herds and keep them healthy, unlike massive collateral damage from industrial ventures that destroy habitats and wipe out entire species. The law now only limits folks who care about birds and gives free reign to industries who destroy species pursuing profits.

There’s a pond close to our house in Ferndale. Albert, The Border Collie, and I walk around the pond every morning and evening. I don’t know the history of the pond, but I suspect that it didn’t exist in my junior high school days. It has the look of a bulldozer sculpture, built for runoff control rather than a naturally occurring resting place for migrating geese and ducks. Nevertheless, I am happy to see the number of birds, raccoons, possums, deer, rabbits, and squirrels that Albert and I encounter on our walks.

The pond would have been in Allen Gardiner’s backyard. I haven’t seen or heard from Allen since high school, but I owe him a debt. One day in the Frank Alexander Junior High library, he pointed me toward a shelf of books by Robert Heinlein, the science fiction author, and started me on a science fiction binge in the seventh or eighth grade that I haven’t quite shaken yet. I wouldn’t be who I am today without Allen’s prompting. Not that I’m anything special, but I just wouldn’t be who I am.

Getting back to the pond. A few days ago, night and morning, I counted twenty-three geese, maybe two dozen mallards, three drake mergansers and I’ll bet three female mergansers were lurking and diving, a blue heron perched in a tree, and a seagull bobbing on the water. The following afternoon, I saw maybe a dozen mallards, one merganser drake, and Albert spotted a squirrel. (He keeps an exact tally of squirrels.) The heron and geese were gone.

I haven’t seen as many geese as last year this fall; I miss those noisy honkers and prolific poopers. I am not about to say that the changes in migratory bird regulation has had immediate effect, but this temporary paucity reminds me of what I will miss as wildlife disappears.

Until the community takes a stand, wildlife of all forms will become rarer and harder to experience. When there is money to be made, there is always someone willing to grab a buck and trash what other people care about. Practically, sometimes a small sacrifice may be justified, but a balance must be struck. When something dies, money can’t buy it back or fix it. Lose too much and we all have nothing.

We once cared. Raptors were rare in the skies over Waschke Road when I was growing up, but after DDT and other pesticides were regulated, the hawks and eagles returned.

So. I am optimistic. If we once cared, we can care again.

Hawks and Eagles

Silent Spring was published in 1962. Alida, the daughter of a neighbor was bookkeeper for Griggs, an office supply and book store in downtown Bellingham. Griggs closed in 2014 after a 100 year run. Alida brought home a copy of Silent Spring. Her family read it. They lent their copy to my dad and mom. Dad, Mom, and I all read it.

The neighbors were big fans of Carson. Their family was inclined to extremes. At one point, they became vegetarians. During their vegetarian phase, the patriarch of the clan was a frequent guest at the heavy platters of the roast beef from cull dairy cows that were the mainstay of the Waschke Road diet. The vegetarian distraction did not last long, but the patriarch’s frequent appearance at our dinner table colored the reaction of my parents to his enthusiasm for Rachel Carson.

Dad was not a fan of chemical herbicides and pesticides. He often talked about the declining effectiveness of DDT. When he first applied it around the cattle, he said the barn flies died so quickly, he swept a black carpet of fly carcasses from the barn floor. The next time he sprayed, flies died, but not as fast or in as great a quantity. Within a few years, he said DDT scarcely worked.

Sometime in the 1960s, burdock, the invasive weed that inspired Velcro, became a problem in the barnyard and the outskirts of the woods. Burdock burrs got in cows manes and tails and had to be cut out. Without tending, wads of burrs grew softball sized and interfered with the cows’ feeding. For a while, Dad carried a hand pump sprayer and spot sprayed burdock with 2 4.D, the broad leaf herbicide, like people use glyphosate (Roundup) today. That lasted about a season before he decided that a grub hoe was cheaper and more effective. For a couple of years of we carried around grub hoes and rooted out every burdock we saw before seeds formed. Then the burdock practically disappeared and the grub hoes stayed in the tool shed.

Dad continued to use chemicals, but he was always skeptical. He maintained chemicals were most effective if they were used lightly as a supplement to traditional cultivation and weeding, but he never said they were bad, just over used.

But let me get back to Rachel Carson. She predicted that bird populations, especially birds of prey like hawks and eagles, would decline if DDT and other pesticides and herbicides continued to be used indiscriminately. She hit the right note at the right time and eventually the environmental protection act was passed.

You can argue that the EPA is an unwarranted extension of government and a bureaucratic nightmare, but I disagree. I’ll go along that most large organizations have elements of inefficiency and confusion—I developed software products for several Fortune 500 corporations and I will testify that if the Waschke Homestead had been run like a corporation, we all would have starved long ago.

Some people think government is less efficient than private enterprise. I disagree there too. I’ve executed software contracts with the Department of Defense, Allstate Corporation, NATO, Deutsche Bank, and dozens of other large organizations. Both government and private enterprises can be run well or badly. Good ones are effective and efficient, bad ones are incompetent and wasteful. And small business is not off the hook. It’s quality that counts, not private versus public, big versus small.

We could use more good businessmen in government, not scam artists who have failed in serial bankruptcies, but good men who have a track record of success. And a lot of businesses could use the scrupulous integrity of good public servants. I’ll admit that there is less incentive to become a public servant today. It’s easier to make your first million in business than public service. From what I have seen, good public servants are in it to serve the public, and there are fewer such people today. I profoundly wish that were not so. Note that I have not mentioned politicians. I did not intend to. A good politician is harder to find these days than a hummingbird nest. They exist, but you have to keep your eyes open.

When I was a kid, seeing a hawk was rare. So rare that Dad would stop the tractor to watch them hunting field mice over the pastures. Eagles? Who ever saw an eagle in the 50s and 60s? That has changed. When I walk Waschke Road and the fields, I see hawks and eagles almost daily. Farmers stopped spraying DDT from fifty-gallon drums and started using chemicals carefully instead of indiscriminately. It’s not perfect, but it is so much better now.

And the hawks and the eagles came back.

Photos by Jake Knapp (C9 Photography).