Essays

Moseying: Exploring the Natural World

Baby bird on the ground
June 20, 2004

The football shaped nest had blown out of the tree. A baby bird lay on the sidewalk, covered with ants, plaintively peeping, pulling out its downy feathers as it tried to remove the ants. Other baby birds huddled and cuddled within the nest. The air temperature – 103 degrees. The ground temperature – 160 degrees. The wind – a steady 25 miles per hour with gusts over 50 in the last hour. The baby birds would soon die, if nothing was done.

Our culture teaches us to react emotionally to such a sight. The “rights of the individual” philosophy that guides us encourages us to take pity on the helpless. My guest at the Gone Native Arboretum knelt and tried to brush the big black ants off of the baby bird. I looked around to see if the parents were nearby. I could hear thirty birds of the same species in the grove of 5 Afghan Pines under which we stood.

I decided to give a little information to my guest. “It is a House Sparrow nest. House Sparrows are plentiful. They take the food away from other birds by the sheer numbers of their presence. They are non-native – and strictly live around people’s houses and farms. They roost at night in these trees, and their droppings splatter the pickup that is parked here at night.”

My guest listened, but did not realize the direction I was taking. “Can we put the nest back in the tree? Would the parents come back and feed it? Or is it true that if you touch the babies the parents won’t come back? We have to do something!”

I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. What I was about to say would go against such humanitarian impulses. “10 billion birds lay 40 billion eggs each year. Next year there are 10 billion birds again. 40 billion birds die every year, 39 billion, 998 million of them die naturally. This is one of the ways. Pollution, windows, cars, and hunting only kill a tiny percentage. Habitat loss kills a similar percentage. Within a mile of us are probably at least 100 nests torn up by the 50 mile an hour winds of the dry thunderstorm that just passed us. Hundreds of baby birds are in the same fix right now, close to us.”

“When I was about 9 years old I found a nest like this, and I wanted to do something, too. My mom – I have told you about her, the leading pioneer ornithologist of the region, a founder of the Texas Ornithological Society, and a long time regional editor for American Birds, an Audubon Society publication – stopped me from touching the nest, and told me to leave them alone. I started crying, reacting strongly to what seemed like a horribly cruel thing to do – to leave the poor helpless babies to die. I broke away from her and reached for the birds. My older brother forcibly restrained me, and my emotions crested. I started swinging blindly, and trying to kick him. The two of them lead me away.”

“There are three different wild predators here at Gone Native. One of them will find this wonderful gift of a meal before long. The fox would love such a meal. So would the bullsnake – we just saw his fresh tracks a few minutes ago. And listen – do you hear the roadrunner? He would love this gift as well. Predators eat other creatures – and of those birds that die every year, most of them are eaten by predators, and if not predators, then the scavengers will get them. The ants are appreciating the meal already.”

My guest’s lip curled. “It is so disgusting – I can imagine how it feels as the ants bite in – it must feel like it is on fire! It is in misery!” My guest looked at the pine from which the nest had fallen. Its first limbs were out of reach, even if a person stood on a stepladder. “What if we put it on that bench over there – at least the ants won’t get them, and maybe the parents will feed them there?” My guest paused. “Oh… the predators would still get them, huh? Their safety depends on being high in that tree. What if we put it in that redbud there, in the crotch of the main trunks?”

“Look in the Chinese Pistache and the Soapberry over here.” I lead my guest a few dozen feet. Up in those trees were four other house sparrow nests. “They are in the crotches of the forks of branches, where the gray fox can not walk even though they can climb into the trees, and the nests are higher than a bullsnake usually goes. The roadrunner usually won’t tear up the nests up there – the parents fly at it and even peck it, and it has to keep its balance as they do, so it is usually too much trouble for it – and all of those babies in these nests probably will live. You hear them?”

My guest stood up straight. “You are telling me to let them die, to leave this alone! That is cruel! It is horrible!”

I shrugged, turned away, looking at the ground, and trying to think of something to say. The implacability of the natural world means that death is an ever constant presence, and death is always waiting for a mistake to happen. That concept is “brutal.” “Brutal,” that is, by certain sets of standards. “Nature” is not judgmental. It just is – and contains death, gore, excrement, pain, and all that “icky,” “nasty,” “gross” stuff.

“The natural world is not a happy-ending Disney movie, with all the animals blissfully living in gentle harmony in a perfect world with no death.” My tone must have seemed defensive and caustic. My guest’s eyes narrowed into a squint that lasted for fifteen seconds. I could see various thoughts form emotional responses and my guest’s features kept subtly changing as different answers were composed and then discarded. To give my guest some more time to think, I continued.

“If you were to take this group of baby birds to a professional rehabilitation facility, and the closest is 100 miles away, the workers there would smile sweetly and say thank you and promise to take care of it. After you left, the babies would be fed to the hawks and owls, because house sparrows are prey animals – thousands of baby birds are born so other things can eat.” I paused, and then gave another option to be considered.

“You could take them home and take care of them. These English sparrows, or house sparrows, as well as starlings and pigeons are not protected by law, so there is no legal reason to stop you from taking care of them. They will need ground up bugs all day, from first gray light to the last glow of the sunset. You will need to tend them for about a dozen days. You will need to take their fecal sacs out of the nest as soon as they emerge, so they don’t wallow in their own droppings. The peeping will be constant.”

As soon as I said that, my guest imagined the non-stop care of the baby birds. “I couldn’t do that – that is too much – I have a job, a family, I have to do the every day things of life – cooking, washing, shopping.” As my guest spoke, another option came trotting up, rubbed against my legs, spotted the nest and the baby bird. Mindy, the big 17-pound male “outside” cat, slapped the baby bird on the ground and most of the ants went flying off. He hit it again and when it stopped rolling no ants were left. He grabbed it in his mouth, glanced once up at me to make sure I did not want to stop him, and then crunched down.