Hey tweets, John and I went to see the movie, "Hidalgo," over the weekend.
It's a very fine film based on "a true story," as the film credits tout.
That may be, but I have a feeling that parts of the story were "economized,"
as Mark Twain would say. One scene in particular springs to mind. The hero,
who is racing his mustang Hidalgo 3,000 miles across the Arabian desert,
comes to an oasis after one more grueling day in the saddle. He's tired and
hungry, and he spots a rabbit hopping from behind a bush. He takes out his
Colt to shoot the rabbit, but before he can fire, a peregrine swoops down
and nails the rabbit. The peregrine's owner, a Bedouin in the race, picks up
the rabbit with a grin and strides off. Of course we birders know that it's
not too likely that the peregrine nailed the rabbit. Far more probable that
the bird handlers lay the rabbit carcass out on the set, with perhaps a
piece of raw meat on it, and enticed the somewhat flummoxed-looking falcon
to stand on the rabbit, looking fierce and predatory.

I bring this up because I was reminded of the nature of truth at the Fill
yesterday. I was gazing out at the rafts of coots and ducks and such on
Union Bay when a dad with a toddler came up to stand beside me. The toddler
was fascinated by a waterfowl nearby, and the dad told the kid it was a
duck. I, in the interests of truth, helpfully pointed out to the dad that
the bird was a pied-billed grebe, a critter not very closely to ducks at
all. The dad gave me an offended glance and then proceeded to point out more
"ducks" to the kid.

I took the rebuff philosophically. It's happened to me before. I was at
Aransas NWR one year, trying to spot whooping cranes from the lookout tower.
No cranes in sight, just several great egrets. A man and wife with a video
camera climbed the tower to take pictures of the cranes. I was helpful then,
too, telling the couple that there were unfortunately no cranes in view,
just really nice egrets. Speaking in a very loud voice, the woman told her
husband, "Be sure to take lots of pictures of the *cranes*, dear."

I realized that I had erred in trying to correct this couple, as well as the
pied-billed grebe dad. You shouldn't take someone's dream away unless you
can replace it with a better dream. That crane couple was going to go back
to Michigan and show their video to all their friends. They would describe
how thrilled they were to see these wonderful endangered creatures. Maybe
their friends would be moved by their story and pictures to think better of
the environment, try harder to tread lightly on the ground, give more to
restoration efforts, buy fewer SUVs. Who knows what would be the result? But
we know that the crane couple, however misguided, would be spreading the
good word about a bird that needs for people to treat the world more kindly.

I have struggled with the notion that that couple was going to do some good
with a falsehood. How can good come from something that isn't true? When
politicians do this, saying an untruth that will serve what they think is a
larger, better purpose, it leads our country into adventures that don't
always turn out well and aren't conducive to us living up to our noble
ideals. We have a good word for this: manipulation. I worried that I was
being complicit in manipulating the people who would be watching that video,
complicit in getting a little toddler excited about birds that weren't
ducks.

But as I've thought about these incidents, I have come to believe that
something else is going on than the obvious, outward appearance of correct
bird identification and accurate portrayal of bird behavior. Isn't there a
deeper truth than whether teeny tiny white birds in a home video are really
egrets or cranes? Or whether a waterfowl is a grebe or a duck to a
two-year-old who is more concerned about the wonder of any creature swimming
around wearing feathers? Maybe it's better to approach these people at the
level where they are: they love nature, glory in nature's beauties and are
having a moment of perfect joy in God's creatures. Who cares if the creature
at hand is an egret or a crane? That fact can come to them later, if they
are interested. What matters more is the love.

We birding fanatics can take pleasure (and pride!) in our knowledge of
minutiae connected to birds. We can argue until our eyes bubble about
whether a particular gull is a pure greater black-backed or some super-rare
hybrid. We can speculate about how a Xantus' hummingbird got up to BC - was
it by its own efforts, or did someone release it on purpose, or did it hitch
a ride in a van? More productively, we can take our knowledge and apply it
to truly help birds survive. But to succeed at this last task, we will need
the good will and support of folks who will never care whether a big white
bird is a crane or an egret. All they will care about is the feeling they
get when they are lucky enough to witness a miracle of evolution. For people
like this (and they are the majority, I think), knowledge works best when it
enhances their dream. The next time I hear some non-birder say something
false, I'm going to count to ten and try to think of a way to impart my
knowledge so that it adds to that person's pleasure and increases the sense
of wonder.

FYI, in the interests of transparency, please note that I make this argument
on the eve of the Master Birders final exam on Wednesday, an exam in which
bird identification and knowledge of behavior will be all; everything else
will be small. Yikes.

Here's what I saw at the Fill yesterday:

pied-billed grebe
double-crested cormorant
great blue heron
Canada goose
mallard
gadwall
green-winged teal
American wigeon
northern pintail
northern shoveler
ruddy duck
ring-necked duck
greater scaup
lesser scaup
bufflehead
common merganser
hooded merganser
American coot
killdeer
glaucous-winged gull
bald eagle
merlin
rock pigeon
Anna's hummingbird
downy woodpecker
northern flicker
Steller's jay
American crow
bushtit
black-capped chickadee
Bewick's wren
marsh wren
ruby-crowned kinglet
American robin
European starling
yellow-rumped warbler
spotted towhee
song sparrow
white-crowned sparrow
golden-crowned sparrow
Oregon junco
red-winged blackbird
American goldfinch
house finch - Connie, Seattle

csidles at isomedia.com