Laura Erickson's For the Birds

Sunday, June 1, 2008

And life goes on...

Photon and I just got back from our afternoon walk, and guess what was singing right where the stream reaches the marsh? A male Yellow-throated Vireo. Whether the singing bird today is MY bird, and the one who died yesterday was one from an adjoining territory or a "floater" waiting in the wings for an available territory, or the singing bird today was a floater who jumped into the first available territory, I'll never know. Nature is resiliant, and it takes more than one car collision to take out a neighborhood's breeding birds. But we get SO complacent, trusting that Nature will produce an endless supply of birds. How could people possibly kill the most abundant landbird on earth? Inconceivable! At least, up until the last Passenger Pigeons died out.