Tag: silent spring
Silent spring for real
by Ian on Jul.27, 2009, under Bird Watching
My wife brought me a book from the library, “say goodbye to the cuckoo” by Michael McCarthy and I finished it yesterday. It is an exploration of the birds that are thought of by us a spring-bringers, the cuckoo, the warblers, the nightingale, the spotted flycatcher, the swallows and martins etc. the author treats each bird in turn and explores it’s migration, it’s migration route and the sense of wonder it brings to us from past literature and present experiences, and the loss we feel when there is a lack of spring migrants, or worse, when they have not returned. He has access to experts and uses them to acquaint himself with the magic of each species and in turn you can’t help but become immersed yourself.
This emotional journey ends abruptly with disturbing facts, where with the ending chapters there is a chilling account of species decline. But a much more complicated set of reasons from Rachel Carson’s DDT. Essentially the major influence is climate change and the human burgeoning population that causes death and decline of all species by chemicals, greenhouse gas emissions, habitat loss, killing, soil erosion, pollution etc
If you have an iconic bird spring-bringer, start packing in more memories.
