Are you a Bird Activist? Maybe it's Time for Birders to Give Something Back

By Mel Carriere

Birding can be a fun sport, if you want to call it a sport.  There are many definitions of the word "sport," some limiting the term to an athletic activity requiring physical prowess, and others delineating the concept much more broadly as a "diversion; recreation; pleasant pastime (Dictionary.com)."  I suppose if we use this latter meaning we could call anything a sport as long as it is a pleasant pastime.  Watching TV could be called a sport; even washing dishes if that is the way you release your stress.

While we let others quibble over semantics, I will cease my digression into verbal nonsense and go back to the immediate subject of birding as a sport.  The truth is, there are thousands of birders that treat birding as a sport, and there are massive birding competitions now among bird listing devotees who fiercely compete over who can compile the biggest list for any given day.  Even the Christmas bird count I participated in seemed to degenerate into a competition over which counting group could check off the coolest birds.  There I was, thinking it was more of a scientific endeavor to count the birds that were really out there, but it seemed like some of the counters were ignoring the flock of boring House Finches on yonder rooftop and crawling into the sagebrush to see if they could flush out a Bell's Vireo.

There is nothing wrong with friendly competition, but with a lot of birders I think obsessive listing sometimes becomes the end rather than the means.  When this happens the pure intellectual and spiritual contemplation that I think is the essence of birding sometimes gets lost.

I gained a new Twitter follower the other day named Becky who sort of grounded me in what birding really should be all about.  Becky's whole trip is trying to save birds from flying into windows.  She has a website dedicated to bird window deaths and she is very passionate about it.  I'm going to put a link to this site if I can find it again, because it always impresses me when someone loves something so much that they are willing to get out there and fight for that cause, even if others think it is silly or they don't think they have time for it.

Bird window deaths touch my heart as well, because I have encountered avians in peril from windows a few times.  One day last year, while delivering mail to an apartment complex I saw a beautiful White-crowned Sparrow that had crashed against a laundry room window and died.  The bird was still in pristine condition, almost as if it had just come from the taxidermist, so I know its demise had been very recent.  I had never seen one of these birds so closely and intimately and I had no idea how vivid and pure their colors really are.  It was a sad thing, indeed, that it took a death to instill in me a pure appreciation of this specie's beauty.

Another time while walking on a sidewalk next to an office building I stumbled upon two male Anna's hummingbirds locked in epic combat, an engagement that ended when one of them crashed into the building's window and fell immobile onto the sidewalk.  The victorious hummingbird was on the concrete next to it, breathing heavily and unable to move.  It was so exhausted I could have picked the winner up if I had chosen to, but I left nature alone.  When I went back around later both birds were gone, so I am hoping that the bird I assumed to be dead was merely stunned and was able to fly away.

Then while working security at a construction site I observed a Raven battling its own reflection in a window.  It was thrashing the glass so lustily that it actually drew blood and left feathers scattered beneath the pane.  I shooed the bird off and covered the offensive window with a piece of plywood before the Raven could do any more damage to itself.

These examples demonstrate that birds and windows don't mix.  Their avian minds cannot grasp the concept of a reflection, so they will fly into the spotless mirror panes of a tall building because they think the blue sky reflection is the actual blue sky, or they will fly into a laundry room window because they think the reflection of trees they see there are actual trees.

Meanwhile, a lot of birders, myself included, fail to take these avian deaths seriously because we are too busy flooding the Internet with bird pictures or madly checking off more birds than the other guy in big day birding competitions.  We use the birds for our own pleasure, and we spend millions of dollars globetrotting off to Indonesia to see how many of the 39 species of Birds of Paradise we can cross off the old list.  Meanwhile, how much are we giving to bird conservation efforts, and how much are we doing to prevent birds from flying into our laundry room windows?

I think it is time for all of us to give something back to the birds.  In addition to paycheck deductions, I am willing to give back 50% of what I get off this blog to bird conservation, including the fight against window deaths.  At present this is half of 23 cents, which means your continued visits to my site and your support of my sponsors will help.  So lift you head up from that silly list for a moment and look in the mirror to find a guy or gal who can help.  Don't beat yourself silly against that mirror thinking you have an intruder in the house; no need to go to that length of solidarity to show your support for the fight against avian window crashes.




This is the link to Becky's birds and windows blog.

The picture above is a crappy cell phone picture of a Mockingbird that belongs to me.  It is a bad picture, I will admit, but the barbed wire the bird is perched upon gives it a sinister, prison-like feel.  I did not take this from my jail cell window, however.  At present, both myself and the Mockingbird have still not been incarcerated.