I’m so fucking salty about passenger pigeons. I did a paper on them for school and it just made me so upset how people treated them and that I will never get to see one of those beautiful flocks fly overhead. I guess the one good thing about all this is, because of their loss, wildlife conservation became a conversation in this country and people began to rethink their actions.

i know…i cried seeing a stuffed specimen as a kid. it’s always been fascinating but horrific to consider their extinction, given just the sheer numbers of them. and ultimately yeah, conservation wasn’t really…a thing up until that point. so i guess that their sacrifice is worth something, but at the same time, we haven’t stopped killing off entire species…

hey i just wanted to say that your post about the redwing blackbird really struck a chord with me. I’m currently writing a proposal to get some funding for the wildlife rehab center i work at, and i’ve been struggling to find the words to say why its so important to me. what you wrote perfectly captured why our center treats pigeons as well as eagles, and field mice and porcupines as well as lynx and bears. i’m keeping the post open next to me as i write the proposal for inspiration. thank you

aww, thank you. and thank you for all the great work that you do. i hope your proposal goes well. i know ive personally taken little birds like chickadees to rehabbers, and i don’t feel like their life has any less value than an “impressive” bird, you know?

vampireapologist:

Me, waking you up at two am: hey, do you ever think about how we live in a culture of rejecting our local “wild places” in favor of fetishizing and romanticizing the distant and different?

There’s this overwhelming rhetoric we’re fed that the only nature worth protecting is Grand and Huge and most of all Somewhere Else.

Nobody thinks about the wetland behind their local Walmart that is in Desperate need of protection, or the little remnant prairie in a cemetery, because they’re too focused on the abstract and often flawed concept of “wilderness” somewhere else.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to travel to see something new and unique, but the way I hear people talk about our own backyard, the way the last remnants of what we have here are ignored or outright rejected, breaks my heart.

My professor has spent his entire career in the Midwest trying to protect wetlands from housing developments and new superstores, but he almost always loses, not just because the developers have money, but the community doesn’t care enough to do anything about it.

Afterall, what’s a few old oak and birch trees in a little puddle of a swamp compared to miles of marsh in Scandinavia? What’s a grassy hill to a distant mountain range?

Well, to the duck, to the heron, to the bluebird, and to precious few people, I’d say it’s Everything.

I love to travel myself, and I know people probably don’t know that when they say “why is our wildlife/plant life etc. so lame” that they’re contributing to an attitude of rejecting what unique beauty we do have,

But

I hope one day people can see the wonder nearby and fight to protect it. I hope there’s something left to protect.

Anyway…..where do u keep your cups I want some water.

dragonfucker-supreme:

todaysbird:

everything can be magical if you let it be. i remember the first time seeing red-winged blackbirds i was just…enthralled. i watched them for maybe an hour. i thought they made the sweetest noises and were just so pretty. and i found out later on that people consider them nuisances and pests. they’re literally common all over the united states but because they weren’t familiar to me they weren’t a burden or an annoyance but something beautiful. if we don’t let other people tell us how to feel about things, maybe we can just like things for what they are

this is a hotter, deeper take than i ever expected to see from this blog, but you’re so fucking right and i think this is a good ass post and a sentiment everyone should at least think about