The Silence of the Birds
The Sixth Great Extinction is taking place without a peep
When I was a young child, some of my favorite memories revolved around visiting grandparents who had a tiny house, but a big backyard. It featured a line of trees running down the right side, a couple of them good for climbing, a bountiful cherry tree, and a weeping willow whose graceful branches swept the ground, creating a gentle, enveloping, hiding place. The fragrance of roses my grandmother tended behind the house accompanied peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at the picnic table, and birds fluttered a feeder and splashed in a concrete bath nearby. Waking early as healthy little kids do, every day a new mystery to be explored after all, I remember the sun streaming into the low, double second story bedroom windows nestled in a peak of this precious little Cape Cod, built with love and detail by the old man next door who tended a huge vegetable garden. Summer mornings were invariably greeted by a raucous bird symphony, contrasted by the gentle cooing of mourning doves.
Four decades later, as an avid lifelong cyclist, I sometimes rose before dawn to enjoy the beauty of the Helderberg Mountains. I started in her dimly lit foothills — long bicycle rides that would crest her peaks later — first rolling over the easier rises, then dipping through the cool mists of valley fog, as the birds awoke with tentative sleepy peeps at first, then breaking into a startling cacophony as they too started their day. In those first hours, the world was mine as most humans slept. I was accompanied only by the rhythm of my pedaling, the satisfying sound of narrow tires compressing and releasing on accelerations, and the well-earned syncopation of my breath — deep lungs, and strong beating heart working together. Mind and body were one.
On Adirondack hikes I spied Great Herons, their startling wings outstretched in furtive ponds or gliding low and silently over quiet streams. In college, I made annual bicycle rides from Buffalo to Letchworth State Park, and met an eccentric old man outside the park who kept perhaps 100 ducks from all over the world, their beauty and variety mesmerizing. When I put feeders out at my rural 1800s Galway, NY home decades later, I attracted varieties of birds ranging from bluejays, grosbeaks, orioles and cardinals, to finches, bluebirds and nuthatches. Bold chickadees landed on me to my delight when refilling the feeders, and in the fall wild turkeys marched through.
Birds had an effect on me, that I never contemplated deeply, they were just a part of life I took for granted, but now do because where I live I feel their absence.
After 35 years of rural living, I returned to my college town, Buffalo, initially living downtown in the narrow streets of 1900s neighborhoods, populated with quirky old frame houses painted in daring colors. From my porch roof I watched acrobatic swallows diving and darting for insects, and crows conversing — communicating end of day strategies before flying over in small organized groups, totaling hundreds. I first witnessed this behavior in the early mornings of East Greenbush, NY, in the 1990s where they gathered in my neighbor’s 30’ tall fir trees and loudly discussed the day’s plans before, taking to the air in different directions. Corvids as they are known have intelligence equivalent to a seven-year-old child, use tools, and have proven ability to solve complex problems. I once watched one having a conversation with itself from 20’ away, and the apparent vocabulary was a wonder.
Now I live in a quiet older suburb just a few miles outside of Buffalo proper, and am sad to report I’ve seen a change. In just three years in my new home, I have noted the loss of cooing mourning doves, and a marked lack of bird activity. Birds previously nesting in my bushes and the neighbor’s eaves have not returned, nor do I see the brown rabbits that were somehow scraping out a living.
It is silent in my neighborhood, and most sadly this is anecdotal evidence is backed by scientific study of a worldwide extinction event, The Sixth Extinction under way with blinding, unprecedented speed.
PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), is a journal of scientific publication. From this 2023 article, Mutilation of the Tree of Life Via Mass Extinction of Animal Genera, it states:
We are in the sixth mass extinction event. Unlike the previous five, this one is caused by the overgrowth of a single species, Homo sapiens. Although the episode is often viewed as an unusually fast (in evolutionary time) loss of species, it is much more threatening, because beyond that loss, it is causing rapid mutilation of the tree of life, where entire branches (collections of species, genera, families, and so on) and the functions they perform are being lost. It is changing the trajectory of evolution globally and destroying the conditions that make human life possible. It is an irreversible threat to the persistence of civilization and the livability of future environments for H. sapiens. Instant corrective actions are required.
Yes, that’s frightening, completely unaddressed by government, and nearly so by mainstream media. Other scientific publications come to the same conclusions, Stanford here, and ScienceAdvances here. This reality is not debatable, there are no “alternate facts,” Kellyanne Conway. Populations of vertebrates, land ocean and air, and invertebrates also of land ocean and air, including the pollinators of our crops, consider that, are plummeting at mind-numbing speed from unrelenting habitat destruction (land clearing for “progress” and inexorably increasing fire and flood), ocean heat and acidification, and continued massive use of pesticides that reside in your body, your child’s and mine as well. The losses are apparent in the silence of my neighborhood as I write, the birds I lament, some 3 billion of them extinguished in the US and Canada alone since 1970.
Where humans go extinction follows
My awareness of the crisis we have created on our one, true spaceship, fuck billionaire rockets, the Earth, is profound. There are few moments when this crisis of delusion doesn’t dominate my thoughts. We are led by fools and charlatans. Both great poverty and great wealth breed great ignorance. One lives in the myopia of endless plenitude — private jets and luxury accommodations all over the world. The other lives in the poverty that obscene wealth creates. It’s class warfare, as always.
As Trump destroys the economy, healthcare and FEMA, the pain will increase. As the MAGA faithful roil over the Epstein list, and that pain increases, there may be an opportunity to find common ground. A MAGA in my life is listening more. Our predicament isn’t Republican versus Democrat or liberal versus conservative. Both parties have played us. Tell the MAGA's that. It’s true.
As horrible as our situation is, this regime is creating opportunities. Patient overtures, and carefully considered (limited) conversations may persuade a few of the relatives and friends you have lost to propaganda since Trump’s first term and Covid. Don’t go into climate change and overshoot. Stick to how ALL of us are getting shafted. To have a chance, we must agree on the common enemy. We can work on the rest later by building lost trust.
Some of us garden for wildlife and seek to make our yards refuges for birds, insects, etc. Douglas Tallamy has championed this movement and provided many resources to assist gardeners. I cannot imagine living without my fellow creatures. Let us all do everything we can to stave off these extinctions, even regenerating the soil and promoting healthy habitats.
My heart is broken. I remember when the Blue Jays used to annoy me. Now I would give anything to see and hear one. We've had no birds even at our bird bath this year. I haven't seen a cardinal, our state bird, since spring. And then only one or two. No robins. We even only rarely see a crow. It's unbelievable!