Part 13

CONSERVATION OVER THE TELEPHONE

Richard Orr, the Tribune reporter, called me one day about bronze grackles. It seems that the Chicago Tribune, in their "Day by Day on the Farm," had told about the grackles on the Tribune farm. A Tribune reader wrote in, expressing surprise that grackles were permitted on the Tribune farm and gave details of destruction by grackles of other birds, personally observed. What were the facts of the case? Should grackles be tolerated? Or should they be eliminated? Orr wanted to know.

This is the sort of question that is difficult. It is important, too, for it involves basic conservation issues. And there is no sharp, clear-cut yes-or-no answer. The question as to the grackle's character reminds me of the character of Moses, as explained when I was in school by a professor of the Bible: The black was there and the white was there; Moses was a character sketch in gray. And so with most creatures. They're both good and bad from our standpoint. Grackles certainly do kill other birds at times, and interrupt the nesting of some of our favorite songbirds. And yet, liking birds as I do, I tolerate them in my garden. On a trumpet vine on our garage in Chesterton, Indiana, one year we had a grackle build its nest on top of a domed English-sparrow nest. The young of both sparrows and grackles hatched about the same time, and the two families, within six inches of each other, were successfully raised without friction between the parents.

Quite evidently grackles are not always killers of other birds. As to robins or grackles being the "better" birds, if we had a robin's nest that we prized, and the grackle killed the young in it, the grackle would be "bad." But if we were an inquiring farmer, and had to weigh the grackle against the robin, we might find the grackle "good" and the robin "bad." The grackle feeds its young vast quantities of insects harmful to the gardener; the robin sometimes seems to specialize in earthworms. Earthworms are beneficial to man, passing through the earth, making air and water more accessible, and, by passing earth and vegetable matter through their intestines, enrich the soil.

The house wren that warned the Tribune reader when the grackles were about is often prized as a garden bird; it is bold, saucy in appearance, and a vigorous songster. But it is also well known as a quarrelsome bird, prone to punch holes in the eggs of its neighbors, and it also may fill up with sticks nesting boxes so that other birds cannot use them.

The above was the gist of what I told Orr, and appeared in the May 5, 1950, Tribune.

Thinking of it afterwards, as is usual, I thought of many other things I could have said, and perhaps made more clear that no bird is all good or all bad, from our human point of view. Their relationships with the rest of the landscape are complex. I like to see butterflies flit about my garden. But butterflies are caterpillars at one stage. And caterpillars may eat some of the things in my garden. But some birds feed on caterpillars. If I eliminate the caterpillars because they eat the plants I like, at one stroke I eliminate the source of the butterflies I like, and food for some birds I also like.

Perhaps the partial answer, if answer there be in this imperfect world, is summed up by moderation: I can have some butterflies, some caterpillars, some plants, and some birds in my garden. If one becomes too abundant and interferes with the others, I prune it. Maintaining some sort of a balance, we can have some of each.

BIRDS WASHING FOOD

We not only wash ourselves and our clothes, but certain items of our food are regularly washed, as spinach, to get the sand out of it. Washing has been so important in our society that we've coined the term "Cleanliness is next to godliness." Possibly we've the snobbish idea it's a strictly human trait. Among other animals we don't expect to find water used for such cleanliness, and the raccoon, who does wash his food, is considered a sort of biological oddity.

But when we come to birds we find a surprising number of them that wash their food.

The dipper of our Western mountains in Oregon has been seen to wash insects and grubs before feeding them to the young birds. The parents held the food crosswise in the bill and the head was twisted rapidly from side to side in the water. Not until then was the food taken to the nest for the young.

The scene shifts to Africa. Four buff-backed herons were feeding on a flooded lawn at Gezira, Egypt. One of the birds captured a large insect, apparently a large black beetle. Holding the insect in the tip of its bill, the bird walked to the water, immersed the beetle three times, shaking and fumbling with it the while, and then swallowing it.

Then in Britain came a whole host of records, after an observation in Holland in 1946 of curlew sandpipers washing food. The birds were probing the dry mud at the edge of a little creek. When one of the birds got a small sand worm, it at once ran with quick steps to the creek and stepped into the shallow water, where it dipped the worm a few times into the water before swallowing it. Then it trotted away for more. The editor of British Birds, the journal in which this was published, suggested that this might be a more common habit than the scanty published records would indicate, and invited observations.

A spate of records resulted in the succeeding numbers of the journal: a whimbrel washing crabs; a snipe, earthworms; godwits washing their food; with curlews it was reported to be normal; dunlins, greenshanks, redshanks, ringed plover, and oyster catchers were all reported doing this until it appears that with the group of birds we call shore birds--sandpipers, snipes, plovers, and their relatives--it may indeed be normal. The details of the observations strongly suggest that the reason for the washing, in many cases at least, is the same one that underlies our washing spinach; to get the sand and mud out of it.

HOW ANIMAL VOICES SOUND TO FOREIGN EARS

When in El Salvador in 1951, I found that the common barnyard animals had much the same voices as the ones with which I was familiar in the United States. But when I saw their utterances written down it was another matter. The voices written in Spanish sometimes looked as different as the names of the animals written in Spanish. Take the donkey, for example (or burro, as they call it in Spanish). In English we call its "song" "Heehaw!" In Spanish they wrote it for me, "Aja! Aja! Ija! Ija!" There were a number of German scientists at the Instituto Tropical de Investigaciones Científicas, where I was working, and for comparison I asked them to write for me what the same animals said in German. The burro (Esel, they call it in German) says, "Ihå! Ihå!" in German. Despite the difference in the appearance of these words, when they were pronounced by the various nationalities they sounded very similar. Compared with the original assinine pronunciation, the Spanish version was awarded the prize for being the best rendition of the beast's voice.

The cat's "Miau, miau, miau" in Spanish, "Miau, miau" in German, and "Meow" in English were all very similar in appearance as well as sound. The duck's voice came out differently. In Spanish it was "Cuá, cuá, cuá," in German "Wack, wack," and in English the initial "Cu" or "Q" sound of the Spanish, and the final "k" sound of the German are united into "quack." The hoot owl came out much the same in pronunciation, though it looked different in the Spanish "Ju," in German "Hu," and in English "Who."

The cow's, the pig's, and the frog's voices were also rather similar in the three languages: the cow's in Spanish being "Meu, meu, muuu," in German "Mŭh, mŭh," and in English "Moo"; the pig's "Grup-grup, wink," "Óŭik, Óŭik," and "Grunt, oink"; and the frog's "Cruac, croac, croac" "Quak, quak," and "Croak." The barnyard rooster has a difficult voice to transcribe in letters. In Spanish it was "Quiquiriguiiii," in German "Kickeriki," and in English "Cock-a-doodle-do." After listening to the various renditions by the various nations I could see how each rendition came into being, but as for deciding which was closest to the original I hesitated to choose.

When it came to the dog, the discrepancy was surprising: in Spanish it was "Guán, guán, guán," in German "Waŭ, waŭ," and in English "Bowwow." The German and the English are close enough. But though I went outside and listened to the dogs in Salvador, never did they seem to say, "Guán, guán, guán," though I must admit that neither did they seem to say, "Bowwow."

SIGHT IDENTIFICATION

Sometimes when I'm trying to decide whether the birds of the Cameroon Mountains of West Africa are the result of one invasion and variation in situ, or of two invasions, or whether the Himalayan red-billed choughs of Ladak are different from those of Nepal, or how the molt of the cassowary resembles that of penguins, I am called to the telephone to identify a bird someone has seen.

The chances are it's a starling. I've not kept a record, but I fancy half the questions are on identification of starlings. In the distance starlings are black, and people know them. But close up, where details can be seen, they puzzle people with their variety. The young may be dull brownish; the adults may be speckled in the winter; in the spring the speckled tips of the feathers wear off and they're all black. But the black is iridescent, and in sunshine glitters purple or greenish. And the bill color changes too: it becomes yellow in the spring.

Sometimes it's surprising how you can spot a bird from a brief description. Take this one: a bird that sits with its stomach on the ground, and has a big mouth, and long whiskers; a whippoorwill obviously. Or take this one: a bill like a chicken and with flat feet at the back; obviously a pied-billed grebe.

There was one that absolutely stumped me for a day. The lady said it had a bill like an eagle, and a tail that stuck up. For the rest she was vague. Often habits, actions, or habitat are a help to me in placing a bird, but I could get nothing to help--not even where she had seen it. I admitted I couldn't help her. The next day someone brought in a picture puzzle out of a newspaper, and there, right in the center, was my bird. It was a dodo! We don't mind helping people learn things, indeed we consider it part of our job, but to help them work puzzles is too much!

MY LESSON Sight identifications of most students probably contain errors. On common species it's not important, as quantitatively they cancel out. But when a bird tripper, anxious to make a new record, wants me to help him decide he saw an exotic tern, I'm very careful--I've had experience. Rarities have to be checked on all points, not identified by elimination or on a few key characters. One of the best lessons of caution I had in New Guinea. It was in the mountains. Each morning I hunted in a forest where I'd found a new genus of bowerbird. Anything might occur, I thought. Then I saw flying through the treetops what could only be a magpie. A long-tailed, black and white bird, its pattern was unmistakable. There was nothing like it known from New Guinea. It would be an extension of range from Asia. Or it was a new and unknown species. Anyway I needed it as a specimen. But it was shy and eluded me. Morning after morning I haunted the forest. Finally I got the bird. And it turned out to be a partly albinistic specimen of a common, black, long-tailed bird of paradise. The abnormal white areas in its plumage had fooled me completely. But it helped teach me caution as to sight identifications.

One of my Gary friends, Mr. Raymond Grow, who is a keen bird student, has the proper approach, as his identification of a winter duck showed. There were a number of unusual winter birds that season (1951-52): brown-headed chickadees, pine and evening grosbeaks, and red-breasted nuthatches, all from the North, were present. It was the sort of winter one expects other rarities from the North.

DUCK CAUSES CONFUSION Mr. Grow had seen at the edge of Lake Michigan a duck he didn't know; it was boldly patterned in black and white, a big duck. An immature male eider seemed the only possibility. He came into the museum and we went over specimens, noting the difference in the shape of the head between the king and the common eider. He studied the descriptions and the plates. Nothing quite fitted. Unsatisfied, he went back to Michigan City, found the duck again, and suddenly realized it was a muscovy duck, partly albinistic, and escaped from someone's barnyard.