Warning: this is about killing birds. Also, it is pure hearsay (I have
never been to Lebanon, and I have no idea if any of this is true) but
it was nevertheless interesting.

I have never hidden the fact that I am a gun person. I spent all of
the week before last at an intensive police run training camp
learning skills such as preventing someone from disarming you,
handgun drills, and defensive use of 12 bore shotguns. One of the
assistant instructors was an intense, 40 something young man from
Lebanon. He has lived here half his life, but retains a strong accent.
He was a superb marksman and a quiet, focused kind of male. In
Hollywood stereotypes he would be a sniper rather than a
commando.

We were standing out on the range, near Chehalis, taking our turns
practicing shooting a handgun upside down after being knocked flat
on your back. I had a while to wait, so was drifting, when I noticed
my new acquaintance was tracking a bird call in the trees behind us.
He was listening to a Willow flycatcher.

The next day I asked him if he knew the bird. The following is not
exact, but is pretty close:

"Do you know what bird that was?"
"No, but I have always loved that bird sound. Do you know it?"
"It was a Willow flycatcher."
"It was not in a willow."
"I know, but that's its name."
"I love that sound. It reminds me of home."
"Did you look at birds at home?"
"Yes, I love the small birds that come through on migration. I love to
shoot them."
"Did you shoot a lot of them?"
"Yes, everyone does. The small birds would come through in
waves. It sounded like a war, or like artillery. As the sound came
closer we would go out of our houses and shoot the birds as they fly
over. Sometimes my brothers and I would take a car with no top and
drive down the roads until we saw a flock of birds. We would shoot
them from the car. I loved that time, with my brothers." (Later he
introduced me to one of his brothers who had also immigrated
here).

"Did you shoot larger birds, like ducks or cranes?" (my asking about
cranes was, of course, a leading question).
"Not ducks, and cranes are protected."
"Weren't the small birds protected?"
"Yes, but we shot them anyway. Not as much now."
"Why?"
"Not as many of them."

I tried to talk about the region's birds, but I was handicapped by lack
of personal experience. I told him I had read about hunting
songbirds in Italy. "Yes, very good, because of the water all around
the country." I asked him if he knew about the Israeli military
tracking hawks to prevent collisions with F-16's, and if he knew of
the hawk migration there. He didn't want to talk about the Israeli
military, but he knew about the hawks. "Some people shoot them.
Not me."

"Well, then, exactly what kind of birds were you shooting?"
"Mostly starlings." This caught my attention. I shoot starlings myself,
but I'm not as good at it as Clarice. And I don't do it with a shotgun
from a car.

"The same starlings as are over here?"
"Yes, of course. We eat them. They are very good eating It's too bad
you can't shoot them over here."

I have never eaten a starling, but I have killed them just because
they are immigrants. Here I was learning from an immigrant who
actually had a good reason to shoot them.

I think the meeting, and the flycatcher introduction, gave a little fine
tuning to my idea of civilized behavior.

Jerry Broadus, PLS
Geometrix Surveying, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Puyallup, WA. 98371