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
