Keep fighting the good fight Russell!

Mike Clawson,
Monroe

On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 1:12 PM, rrogers <rrogers at olypen.com> wrote:

> An opposing view from a bird-bander****
>
>
> I read the thread about the pros and cons of bird banding with great
> interest. As a bird-bander I'd like to offer some input.
>
> ****
>
> I hate birds. I always have. I don't recall the moment that I realized
> that I hated birds, but must have been at a very early age. When I was in
> the first grade, I began to keep a list of all the birds that I saw and
> hated. At some point along the way I realized that my mission in life would
> be to dedicate it, my life that is, to the extermination of these feathered
> pestilence.
>
> ****
>
> I decided that if I wanted to get rid of them all, I would need to learn
> as much about them as I possibly could. So, I started to study their every
> move. I forced myself to watch them on hours on end. I read everything that
> I could in a quest to find the silver bullet that would do them in.
>
> ****
>
> In my teenage years, I realized that there was a whole subculture of
> people who actually like the stupid little things. I began to hang around
> them to see if they knew something about birds that I did not. To my
> horror, I discovered that these people held some kind of strange reverence
> for the silly little list that I had accumulated. Apparently, seeing more
> than 300 of these things was a very tough task in the state of South
> Carolina, especially for a kid of only sixteen. Little did they know that
> my list was one built on a deep seeded hatred of birds.
>
> ****
>
> In my adulthood I realized that just watching these rats with wings wasn't
> going to get me to a point where I could exterminate large quantities of
> them. I needed another plan. I decided that I would go to a hippie graduate
> school and learn from "real" scientist the secrets of how to knock off
> birds. In fact this was a perfect thing to do. Not only could I learn how
> to kill birds, but, I could also set out to sabotage whatever the heck
> these "real" scientist were doing! Life mission renewed.
>
> ****
>
> What a gold mine! I learned how to take data, twist it to look the way I
> wanted. Better yet, I learned that if the data didn't say what I wanted I
> could make it up to fit my needs! Then there was the moment of true
> enlightenment. I learned that banding birds would kill them out right. Well
> slap me on the ass and call me Patsy! Why hadn't I thought of this? I was
> always afraid that touching them would spread diseases and parasites to me.
> Apparently, because they are birds, and I am a mammal, there is little risk
> to me in this activity.
>
> ****
>
> I started banding birds. I went nuts and banded thousands of them. I used
> mist nets and traps of all kinds. I caught them, pretended to collect data,
> put a band on them, and let them go to die an agonizing death in the weeds
> and bushes.
>
> ****
>
> Birds were really ticking me off. In my yard in Tumwater, I set out
> millet, cracked corn and sunflower seeds for the squirrels to help them
> survive the winter. Instead of squirrels, my feeding stating was over run
> by pesky little juncos. They were eating me out of house and home and
> driving away all the Douglas and gray squirrels. I started banding them in
> order to drive their numbers down and make room for mammals. I took out
> hundreds of juncos with little metal bands.
>
> ****
>
> But much to my surprise, it didn't seem to kill them, at least not right
> away. I started to recapture the ones that I had already banded. I found
> this very discouraging. Some individuals were recaptured 5,6, 7 or more
> times a day, day after day. But by the winters end, the recapture rate
> began to drop off. However, a new bird popped up for everyone that went
> missing. These birds seemed to exhibit signs that "real" scientist said
> proved that they were breeding! ugh. I figured perhaps if the banding
> didn't kill them to quickly, their offspring would come around to the nets
> and traps. This they did. By the score young juncos began to visit my
> feeders. I banded them all. By the summers end, these breeding birds began
> to disappear, I assume, because they were dying off from the bands.
>
> ****
>
> But then a strange thing happened. The birds that I caught the previous
> winter, started returning. Lots of them! I can't tell you the level of
> despair I felt in learning that I didn't kill off the juncos. They hadn't
> died. They simply left for the summer and returned. ugh. The "real"
> scientist said that this was winter site fidelity.
>
> ****
>
> But it just goes to show what an odd and stupid thing birds are. The
> breeding juncos left for the winter only to be replaced by other juncos
> that breed somewhere else. One population seemed to replace the other.
> Stupid birds.
>
> ****
>
> I "studied" birds for school out on McChord AFB and Fort Lewis. I banded
> (killed) thousands of birds there. One bird that I banded was an adult male
> Purple Finch. My faux science book on bird identification said it was an
> after second year (ASY) male. It also said it was breeding because of a
> swollen cloaca. One year to the day later, a bander in Big Sur, California
> recaptured the bird on breeding ground. The "real" scientist said that the
> lack of site fidelity was amazing. BS I said. What they didn't know was
> that I didn't release the bird I caught. I kept it. I drove it to Big Sur
> and threw it into the net of this other "real" scientist. I showed them.
>
> ****
>
> But the "real" scientist still said it was amazing. Just like the banded
> Arctic Terns that circumnavigate the globe. Really? Circumnavigate the
> globe? BS again! We all know the earth is flat. Here is a web page that
> proves it!
>
> ****
>
> http://theflatearthsociety.org/cms/
>
> ****
>
> If the earth were round bigfoot, sasquatch and yeti would be distributed
> much differently. Here is a website that talks about that.
>
> http://www.bfro.net/
>
> On a different subject, it is possible that bigfoot is an extraterrestrial;
>
> http://www.halexandria.org/dward359.htm
>
> I diverge. The real blow to my ego was when I heard that Peirce County
> wanted to put a highway between the bases. Excellent I thought! This could
> cut down my driving time from Olympia to the tattoo and ammo stores in
> Spannaway. I could use my "banding" data to show that this would not have
> any harm on the birdlife there because there was none. What birds were
> there would soon be gone because I banded them. ****
>
>
> Much to my horror, my employer used my date to show that the consulting
> firm under estimated the bird life there and the highway was never built.
> What as missed opportunity, because the highway would have killed many more
> birds that I could have ever accomplish with banding alone. Joke's on them
> any how as I made up all the data.
>
> I went on to complete my "graduate studies" at my hippie school. I made up
> data that was missing, and lied about the rest to make my thesis look
> professional. The "real" scientist said to be careful about how I wrote my
> thesis because my career would be built upon it. BS again! You can find
> your own data and make it look great. No one will ever know.
>
>
> Again, to my horror, another failure on my part. They used my thesis to
> help "list" a bird under the ESA! They are protecting it! ugh! Again the
> joke is on them, as I made it all up. All of it.
>
> I have, in fact, given up on banding as it did not come close to killing
> as many birds as I hoped. I'll go on "studying" them for the rest of my
> life in hopes that one day I'll find that silver bullet.
>
> Russell
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> Russell Rogers
> 302 N Franklin St
> West Chester PA 19380
> (360) 808-7197
> president at olypen.com
> ---------------------------------------------------
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tweeters mailing list
> Tweeters at u.washington.edu
> http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20120411/38705cb0/attachment.htm