Pondering Stewardship and Economics
Well, I don't know if you can see it, but in the center of the picture above is a tiny, fuzzy, white head. That is a newly hatched bald eagle, and the figure on the left is mom. She has her head down, and had just been feeding the baby when she caught sight of us and hid her head. She has been frustrating Katie that way this year. Always a little camera shy, this year, while brooding, she has successfully dropped her head behind the edge of her nest each time she has spotted us.
This baby hatched just this week, and we don't know if there will be any more yet - we'll keep watching. As you can tell, we keep a large distance, but mama eagle seems to always know just where we are.
Usually, this is the time when both parents are seen more often as they struggle to keep up with the care and feeding of the young. I don't know if that will be the case this year. We haven't seen papa since back in February, though perhaps it is just a matter of our timing. We have kept watch on several different nests over the last number of years. One of our favorites had hatched two babies consistently until, two years ago only one of the parents returned. He or she just hung around sadly for a few weeks waiting for the other, until just fading away, never to be seen (by us) again. I don't know if eagles mate for life, but I do know no one has returned to that nest since.
Katie has grown up watching and photographing these eagles and has simply come to expect that they will be here, just as the sun rises or the seasons change. I too grew up outside, and yet I was in my thirties before I even saw a bald eagle. They are a success story just in my lifetime and if the internet is to be believed it has a lot to do with the banning of certain pesticides.
I do remember when a well respected local farmer where I grew up started spraying DDT on his locally famous sweet corn. His neighbor, who had long been his friend, and not coincidentally his brother in law, became upset at picking dead birds out of his yard. Finding that discussion failed to win out over "science" he began hanging dead birds by the dozens in trees along the road with signs saying they had recently eaten the locally famous sweet corn, and suggesting you consider if there was any connection. This was nearly 60 years ago, but the lesson was not lost on me, and it was with amazement that I watched the rebounding eagle populations after the banning.
Inversely, butterfly and honeybee populations have, over roughly the same time frame, precipitously plummeted. I used to be able to catch and release dozens of butterflies a day as a kid. Last year we saw a record low handful of monarchs and only a few more yellow swallowtails. Despite the clear indication that certain other pesticides and herbicides are at least partly to blame, at least one of these - glyphosate (Roundup) - has been recently classified as a matter of national security and thus protected. I wonder if butterflies will become as unheard of to my grandkids as eagles were to me.
I have yet to understand why glyphosate is now protected. Any evidence I have is anecdotal, and the internet is full of arguments both for and against its use - though we do not use it. I feel that for us the risk is not worth the reward. We eat our dandelions, and our goats and sheep relish and thrive on "weeds" more than grass. Our chickens need the "bugs" and "weeds." I have seen my Dad's honeybees perish "coincidentally" twice. Each time was after his township sprayed the Japanese Knotweed while it was in flower.
"Our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility; it is the most horrid blasphemy. It is flinging God's gifts into His face, as if they were of no worth beyond that assigned to them by our destruction of them." - Wendell Berry
I do not know if I am correct in my judgment of glyphosate, or if Rachel Carson was correct in her assessment of DDT. I also do not know how the economics of health stack up against the economics of cheap food. I do know that while people are seeming to be less healthy at a time when there seems to be more food and cheaper food than ever, I will continue to quietly go about my day, an old man doing simple things in an old fashioned way.
I doubt Bayer/Monsanto will notice or care.
I hope that you will.
Dave