Dear Tweeters,
A lone Nighthawk that appeared to not have read my ad in last week's Seattle
Weekly flew over our house on Beacon Hill a minute ago, "singing" and drifting
north.
Tweeters trivia buffs will remember I've piped up before on the subject of
crow populations and crow predation. Here's something I didn't expect.
Birding in rural west Central Illinois until Sunday I didn't see my fifth crow
until the third day, the same day I saw my fifth kestrel. (Number 4 kestrel
was an enraged female diving on number 4 crow, presumably after a successful
nest predation). This despite the fact that the western Illini people worship
the mown grass lawn even more religiously than us here in Toro land. These
lawns were being worked by abundant robins and grackles and modest numbers of
Starlings and House Sparrows. I kept trying to ask people, "They shoot crows
here, don't they," but couldn't make it not sound judgemental, even though it
wasn't, and didn't really find anybody who knew. (I know they did in Pa when
I was growing up and when crows were similarly rare). The towns seem like
Europe with town squares and abundant twittering flocks of excited swifts
overhead. The nighthawks and kestrels seem partial to if not restricted to
the towns, even though there appears to be seemingly endless kestrel-red tail
habitat in the outback, which seemed somewhat devoid of both. Dickcissels,
Red Headed Woodpeckers, (declined in some areas), yellowthroats, Brown
Thrashers (declining badly in parts of the northeast) and Meadowlarks were all
pleasantly common and Indigo Buntings were nothing but a beautiful blue trash
bird.

I was glad to hear comments on the racism of some if not most of the
anti-Makah letters. That letters page could form the basis of a lesson plan
on racism, and it was clear that most of writers weren't aware their bias was
showing.

-Ed Newbold, Seattle (newboldwildlife at netscape.net)


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