I realize that the comments were tongue in cheek. It's the attitude (blame
the geese for being nuisances even though we created the situation that made
them nuisances) behind the "joke" that I'm objecting to.

No, I don't think that the demise of humans would lead to the extirpation of
starlings (or of crows or Canada geese either).

My point as regards these birds was that , to one degree or another, they
have become nuisances because we have altered the environment in such a
fashion as to cause this to happen. AND THE GREATER OUR NUMBERS, THE
GREATER THE CONSEQUENCES OF OUR THOUGHTLESS ALTERATIONS OF THE ENVIRONMENT,
SOMETIMES TO THE POINT THAT OTHERWISE HARMLESS ACTIVITY (from a global
perspective) BECOMES HARMFUL.

It's similar to the situation with grizzly bears. Many people move to
grizzly bear country and then leave their trash out where the bears can
smell it. Then when bears start showing up they complain that bears are a
"nuisance."

In the Northwest, the clearing of forests for agriculture and urban
expansion has created opportunities for starling populations to grow that
they would not have otherwise had.. Starlings love short grass and are
often seen foraging on lawns.

As to mindlessness, nothing could be more mindless than the reason for the
introduction of starlings into North America: the desire by the American
Acclimatization Society, at the end of the last century, to introduce into
North American every species of bird mentioned in Shakespeare's works.

Steve Kimball
Federal Way, WA
skimball at halcyon.com




----- Original Message -----
From: Don Baccus <dhogaza at pacifier.com>
To: <skimball at halcyon.com>; Tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Thursday, August 05, 1999 12:59 PM
Subject: Re: Canadian Geese Limited


> At 12:30 PM 8/5/99 -0700, Steven Kimball wrote:
> >Hey, let's get this straight once and for all: geese, crows, starlings
etc.
> >aren't the problem, we are. They are symptoms (pretty mild ones at that)
of
> >the mindless expansion of our population and economy.
>
> I think the comments were tongue-in-cheek. Starlings, though,
> aren't symptoms of "the mindless expansion of our population and
> economy", they're symptoms of what happens when a species is
> introduced into an environment in which it is non-native and
> in which it flourishes absent the checks on growth "back home".
>
> If we disappeared from North America, do you really believe
> starlings would, too?
>
>
>
> - Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza at pacifier.com>
> Nature photos, on-line guides, Pacific Northwest
> Rare Bird Alert Service and other goodies at
> http://donb.photo.net.