[mou] My two cents worth: the winter of owls

[Laura Erickson]

Bill Lane gives us some wonderful insights into the Boreal Owl life 
cycle.  The more I learn about birds, and human beings, the more awestruck 
I am at the sheer complexity of this tiny planet.  How should we be 
reacting to this owl invasion?  Or is this phenomenon simply too beautiful 
and awe-inspiring and thrilling and interesting and fascinating and tragic 
and heart-breaking and devastating to even imagine there could be a right 
way or a wrong way to interpret it, or to feel about it, or to learn from it?

I'm fielding so many phone calls--now averaging over 10 a day--about this 
irruption that I've come to the conclusion that there are as many ways to 
see and interpret and understand it as there are people.  Those who have 
never before seen an owl are understandably thrilled to see their first 
Great Gray.  Some people are devastated to find them dead.  A woman called 
yesterday sobbing because she found a dead Boreal Owl on her porch.  Should 
this woman, who never even knew such a tiny owl existed until one came to 
her home to die, be ridiculed for her tears, or for not knowing more about 
nature?  Would it change your reaction to know that she is a doctor, who 
knows a lot about something else?

Are compassion and science compatible?  When I was researching nighthawks 
for my Ph.D. project (which I didn't finish because my professor had to 
retire early for health reasons), I came upon a paper by Joe T. Marshall of 
the Smithsonian.  After learning of Edward Jaeger's discovery of 
hibernating Poor-wills, Marshall wanted to see if he could induce 
hibernation in other Caprimulgids, so he took some captive, hand-reared 
nighthawks and withheld food in fall as temperatures and day length 
decreased.  After several days, he stopped the experiment, so touched was 
he by their plaintive cries for food.  He never learned the answer to his 
scientific inquiry, but I learned quite a bit about how to measure a 
man.  Yet at the same time Dr. Marshall was working on this, scientists 
were learning via "exsanguination" experiments that birds could lose much 
more blood than mammals before their blood pressure dropped, they went into 
shock, and they died.  Scientists were learning that redpolls can survive 
colder temperatures than any other songbirds, including ravens, by putting 
them in deep freezers and recording at which temperature each bird 
died--redpolls made it to -80.  Is it ironic that someone might find these 
facts fascinating when she has, in the judgment of some people, way too 
much compassion vs. scientific detachment, and way too much of an impulse 
to intervene when coming face to face with the suffering of a fellow 
creature who meets her eyes?  Is it ironic that when brought owl carcasses, 
she sends them on for study and analysis?

That's the trick with us humans.  We have a mind, and I'm seeing a lot of 
people filling their minds with a lot of interesting things during this owl 
invasion.  We also have a heart.  And we can use our minds to temper our 
hearts, and we can use our hearts to temper our minds.  Should we expend 
time and energy on wildlife rehabilitation that helps a few or habitat 
preservation that helps many?  Or might there be room to do both?  Is 
giving a mouse, or setting out a bird house, or banding a bird, or watching 
an owl from a running car, too much intervention?  Where do we draw 
lines?  Does a scientific approach automatically trump a compassionate 
one?  Do we see a difference in the naturalness of a major mouse population 
crash that is somehow different from the naturalness of a major tree 
blow-down?  How is giving a mouse to a hungry owl, or delivering a starving 
owl to the Raptor Center, different from setting out bird boxes?  Aren't 
both interventions?

The one thing this winter is teaching me is that there are a lot more 
questions than answers.


Laura Erickson
Duluth, MN


Producer, "For the Birds" radio program
<http://www.lauraerickson.com/>

There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of 
birds.  There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of 
nature--the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.

                                 --Rachel Carson