some bird things, & what we can get used to
Douglas Hofstadter’s son spends his time shooting barred owls in an attempt to save spotted owls.
This is part of a plan the FWS approved in August, according to The Owl Hunters: the deadly campaign to save an icon of the Pacific Northwest - basically, the federal government has decided to kill half a million individual barred owls in hopes of saving spotted owls from extinction.
“Hofstadter sees his work as putting the health of a population over the health of an individual.” - Joshua Partlow, The Owl Hunters
We’re literally talking about two owl species that can and do interbreed. (Their hybrid, the Sparred Owl, has a call that apparently sounds “sort of like a Spotted Owl being strangled”.)
This is why I follow stuff like new species announcements, to give me life to hold onto. There’s so much killing out there. What’s the point of any of this. And do the people who set it into motion even feel like they get a choice?
“The fact remains that under the Endangered Species Act, FWS has a legal obligation to do something. “There’s not a clause in the act that says, ‘things are so bad, we’re going to give up,’” said Katherine Fitzgerald, the northern spotted owl recovery lead with the FWS.” - Alison Harford, Owl Vs. Owl
“It’s just,” Danny Hofstadter says, “you get used to it.”
which leads me to this tremendous piece on what we can get used to (being constantly immersed in second-hand smoke, but mostly also addiction to sleeping pills) (oh hey callback to my earlier piece on how to fall asleep, too).
“I thought, oh, at a certain point, Brandon, you were supposed to stop and you didn’t, and I had a premonition that if I didn’t stop then, right then, that moment, I’d never stop” - Brandon, troubled sleep
“There’s not a clause in the [Endangered Species] act that says, ‘things are so bad, we’re going to give up.’” This is the FWS position - sadly, mournfully, graciously accepting reality. But - so what? SO FUCKING WHAT. So what if the law didn’t predict that at a certain point, perhaps, just maybe, a line must be drawn.
Here we are, alive. Here the owls are, alive. Maybe - just maybe! - we shouldn’t just shrug and concede to being ruled by the dead hand of the past?
I don’t really know what the right thing is to do here, but the excuse of being bound by old law really bugs me. (As does killing. Funny thing, that. Super not into it.)
otoh I love following along with the Linnean Society of New York’s NYC Area Rare Bird Alerts. It gives me this cozy feeling of living in a living world
“A RUFOUS HUMMINGBIRD continues to visit feeders in Eastport, Suffolk County, and the homeowners welcome birders to their backyard to view this exciting vagrant. The address is 353 Old Country Road, and visitors should park on Union Street just east of the house and walk back to 353, entering the yard carefully just past the house near shrubs marked by streamers…
Two WHIMBRELS stopped by the sandbar at Jones Beach West End briefly today, and an ICELAND GULL appeared at the Breezy Point tip Monday, while single WESTERN CATTLE EGRETS were noted out in Water Mill last Sunday and up at the Croton Railroad Station in Westchester Monday.
Out at Montauk Point good numbers of SHEARWATERS offshore have included a few hundred GREAT and decent numbers of CORY’S… and a BLUE GROSBEAK was still in Brentwood Wednesday and Thursday.”
(Wish I could find an active, thriving entomology community that feels like all these super cool lively birding groups, though. Where are my bugging peeps at?!)
Seriously, though, I could feel my muscles relaxing and my breathing slowing down as I read through that post. A blue grosbeak, you say? I have no idea what that is (well, I do now), I’m not really a bird person, but I’m so glad to hear one stopped by.
and here’s a different approach to conservation, also run by the FWS - dates and details for the 2025 Federal Duck Stamp Art Contest have been released.
Anyone who wants to hunt migratory waterfowl in the US has to buy a Federal Duck Stamp, and then “98% of the purchase price goes directly to help acquire and protect wetland habitat and purchase conservation easements”.
The annual art contest determines whose art gets featured on next year’s stamp. The 2024 entries were all pretty great!
Some beautiful sentences (and fragments) I’ve come across lately (not to be confused with the perfect sentences newsletter, which I also love):
"Pigeon research will not stand still; if we do not experiment, other powers will." (BBC News)
“Studies of how the general public responds to insects and spiders reveal considerable confusion among respondents as to whether they are scared of things with six, eight, or lots of legs.” - Jeffrey Lockwood, The Infested Mind
“when he would sit and engage in Torah study, the sanctity that he generated was so intense that any bird that would fly over him would be incinerated.” - Bava Batra 134a
“the company's success was "an intricate fraud" and based on "an ocean of lies" including showing a truck rolling downhill to give the impression it was cruising on a highway” (CBS News)
“At the end of three weeks the fish was in an advanced state of decomposition, but the student knew something about it.” - Ezra Pound, The Parable of the Sunfish