I feel the same way about hippies and wolves…
Mike Hamilton of Herons Forever has photographed the birds in the Black River Riparian Forest for eight years, and seen numerous eagle attacks.
“Intellectually I know it may be just part of nature,” he said. “But there’s an attachment you feel to the herons, watching their lives, taking pictures of their chicks. And when you see one carried off, you can’t help but have feelings of dismay, even disgust. If I could, I would fly up there and chase the eagle away.”
h/t Lee Matthews
I blame “Beauty and the Beast”…
Gee birds of prey actually prey!?!
I don’t think lions and tigers will be turning into vegans any time soon either.
“In the jungle the lion sleeps tonight”
But they go hunting in the daylight or whenever a meal happens along. Say, “Nice kitty.”
Cheers
Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
If only he had some kind of implement that would maybe make a noise, or propel an object toward the eagle? But what could it be.., Ah well, I guess saving Herons will just have to wait till Man can fly.
Mike Hamilton is an idiot. ‘Nuff said.
Funny isn’t it, how the author also finds a way to blame this natural eagle behavior on humans.
I remember back in the early 80s, living in Vancouver, when a flash flood down the Squamish River removed all the salmon carcasses that the bald eagles would normally feed on after spawning season. The call went out among the ‘tards, for people to donate frozen fish to scatter along the shore of the river so the poor eagles wouldn’t starve.
And I remember howling with laughter when the ‘tards realized that eagles have wings.
This is nature. It is not supposed to be cute and cuddly. It is wild, cruel, viscous and chaotic. Only morons like this Hamilton guy think otherwise.
and I bet he thinks Avatar is a documentary.
It is a given in the author’s world and the MSM that DDT reduced the eagle population by thinning their eggshells. It did nothing of the sort. Meanwhile he manages to ignore the tens of millions (think about that for a second) who have died of malaria since DDT was banned. More blind reliance on junk science.
http://www.eco-imperialism.com/content/article.php3?id=209
and Harry Potter is a History Text.
Never amazes me how a bear comes into the city, kills someone, and it’s us humans fault.
We’re taking away so much of their territory, the MSM repeats with such certainty.
It just couldn’t be that the bear population has exploded to such an extent that they have to spread somewhere. It couldn’t be that due to banning the Spring bear hunt, there are so many adult male bears that the females have to take the cubs down to civilization where the males won’t follow.
Nah; I’m just full of it!
Funny, I grew up watching Disney (on Sunday nights, I believe) but never had the “animals are people too” syndrome, but then again I also watched Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. More often than not, the host, Marlin Perkins was considered part of the menu of a lot of the critters featured.
Mind you, some people think the Simpson’s are real too. You just can’t fix stupid unless you invoke Darwin.
Personally my allegiance is with the fish the herons are spearing and devouring whole. I see them as competition in some cases, and out and out pests when they are eating fish out of a stocked dugout.
Fred
[…..and I bet he thinks Avatar is a documentary.]
Nope! My money is on Madagascar……
Folks like that sure get upset when Knut discovers it can be fun to be at the top of the food chain and play with your food, don’t they? It’s the same lunacy as reporters viewing that they have no nationality, only a “duty to report what they see”, not considering that although the soldiers on one side consider them a nuisance the warriors on the other consider them high-profile targets. Unfortunately for the above-it-all crowd they do still need to interact with the rest of the world and can’t just survive on the sweet smelling emanations from their own backsides.
Gunny – while I was living at UBC I used to suggest that Stanley Park in the middle of Vancouver could use 2 bears. It would serve a dual purpose: show how respect for natural animals really works (because the especially slow and/or stupid would have a hard time surviving the meeting otherwise) and showing the bad effects of welfare and a pop-and-chips-and-hotdogs (either as gifts from the “visitors” or extorted from local merchants) diet on a “noble creature” (which could then be extrapolated to their affects on society at large).
“””and I bet he thinks Avatar is a documentary.”””
and that “inconvenient truth” was peer reviewed
Herons are predators too, aren’t they? No word of
sadness for their prey.
I am so desole’ that I am going console myself by watching the videos
on Youtube of orcas interacting with seals.
“and that “inconvenient truth” was peer reviewed”
and that peer review is actually worth the paper its printed on these days.
good topic, if you want to see it in real life, go to Beacon Hill park in Victoria, although I belive the city workers clean up most of the mess on the ground early in the morning.
Every major MSM news source stated as fact that DDT caused Eagle populaTION LOSS DUE TO THINNING egg shells while I was growing up.
This seems to be a massive lie.
What possible chance is there of the MSM printing an apology to millions of us who were mislead?
How about an apology for the grand fraud of Gorical’s GW? Something we can do nothing about anyway. Given what Volcanoes and Solar Flares do in a massive way.
We are but ants trying to shift an elephant.
What
“DDT caused Eagle populaTION LOSS DUE TO THINNING egg shells…This seems to be a massive lie.”
Tony, Tony, Tony, give your head a shake, that is an accepted scientific fact that only massive idiots would dispute.
I was boating with the family up the Indian Arm (near Vancouver) a couple summers ago and a couple of bald eagles attacked a seagull sitting on the water. Bit of struggle but they killed it. Their problem was that they couldn’t carry it to shore to eat it and they were about 100m out. So, one of them flies off to sit in a tree on shore and the other swam (!) it to shore. Sort of an awkward breast stroke with its wings. Anyway, as it was a seagull, we kind of cheered on the eagles.
Canukguy,… Oh yeah?… Seen much of this?
[Quote]
#
DDT was mistaken for other organochlorines.
[Glotfelty, DE.. 1970. Anal Chem 42:82-84 (Misidentifications of DDT resulted from interference by “pigment-related natural products in photosynthesic tissues.”); Hylin, JW. 1969. Residue Reviews 26:127 (“Organochlorine compounds in plants can cause interference in residue analyses “); Sims, JJ. 1977. Press release, June 15, 1977 (Certain marine algae produce halogen compounds that are detected by gas chromatography and may be misidentified as DDT metabolites);George JL and DEH Frear. 1966.
Pesticides in the Antarctic. J Appld Ecology 3 (suppl): 155-167 (Antarctic samples of fish and birds widely touted as containing DDT residues likely contained PCBs instead that leached from the plastic containers they were stored in for 6 months prior to analysis)]
#
Laboratory fluorescent lights containing liquid PCBs and plastic tubing leaching PCBs erroneously led to PCBs misidentified as DDT or DDE.
[Gustafson, CG. 1970. Environ Sci Technology 4(10):814-819; Lisk, DJ. 1970. Analysis of pesticide residues: methods and problems. Science 170:589-593; Anderson, DW et al. 1969. Can Field-Naturalist 83:91-112 (Samples reported in 1965 to be contaminated with DDT were acknowledged in 1969 to actually have been contaminated with PCBs.
Faulty analytic methods were blamed); National Audubon Society, Research Dept. 1968. Brown Pelican Newsletter (Tavernier, Florida) No. 1, page 9 (The Audubon Society was aware of the problem of PCB interference in announcing its warning: “DO NOT BRING PLASTICS INTO CONTACT WITH THE SPECIMEN.”)]
#
The coating of aluminum foil used to wrap specimens, formalin, and sodium sulfate may also have contained PCBs or oils that might have interfered with analyses.
[Risebrough, RW. 1971. Presentation to International Symposium on Identification and Measurement of Environmental Pollutants, Ottawa, Canada, June 15, 1971]
Join the club, Canukguy.
Yet Bald Eagles remain on the protected list in spite of their over population. Living in the Fraser Valley I know that eagles are now so numerous that they have completely wiped out Heron colonies in the area and will attack and kill any lamb or goat kid they can. Thanks to my livestock protection dogs they have not succeeded at my farm, but I have lost many chickens, ducks and geese to them over time. Also in my area is a fellow with a Fallow Deer farm, who lost 90% of his fawns last year to eagles (yes the ones with white heads), but heaven help anyone who would dare shoot one.
This is just another example of most people being totally out of touch with nature. I witness almost every year the same mentality concerning bears and cougars, that have no qualms about killing and eating people. Both populations have exploited creating dangerous situations. Yet when the authorities finally kill the animal all the newspapers are full of letters claiming the human victim was at fault. Go figure!
There is a ducki lagoon by the air-park here in Courtenay.
The ducks and ducklings swim about happily feeling REALLY ALIVE!
Every now and again an eagle swoops down and tries to snatch a duck but they scatter well. The Eagle wins 1 out of 5.
The ducks never think of leaving. Living on the edge is fun.
Tony:
–I am dubious about your conclusions drawn from dubious sources but I don’t have the patience to dig in to refute them. However don’t you think it more than a coincidence that the egg shell thinning problem went away when DDT was banned?
Canukguy,
Unlike many, I am not rigid minded. I welcome anyone proving things one way or another.
Either way, SDA readers and I win.
Makes me wish he could fly up there too. Maybe the eagle would drag him away. What the hell! It would save a heron.
When I was a teenager driving the tractor out in the field, I’d scare up cute little baby rabbits which would get pounced on by hawks, which were opportunistically circling my tractor. The first couple of times I jumped out of the tractor and scared the hawks away to protect the bunnies. After discovering that the fluffy little critters were always already dead in the 1st 2 seconds after they were hit, I gave up and let the hawks have their lunch.
I learned early that I couldn’t change the behaviour of the hawks or the bunnies… and today their progeny are still living and dieing on those same fields and I should just stay out of it and leave them both alone.
As I understand the origin of the urban myth of thinned egg shells from DDT, there was a non peer reviewed “study” published in an unknown rag – Poultry Digest (no reputable journal would touch it) which cited the effects of thinned egg shells from a batch of chickens fed a diet of low dose DDT (and without calcium!) If it weren’t for the obvious propensity of the politically correct to parrot anything that reinforces their narratives, it would be hard to believe that an entire generation of the professoriate / media parroted these “findings” sans the details.
Say’s it all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3FMSXAfVp0
Spring must be here as we saw a bald eagle and two Thin Shank hawks yesterday.
Yeah, I wish I could fly too.
Kate, you should stop anthropomorphizing hippies, otherwise you’ll always just feel blue whenever nature takes it’s course.
Why didn’t they blame Global Warming or whatever it’s called now?
Absolutely. Animals should be left to do whatever it is that animals do, but the hippies have to go. We had one down the street who had the outright temerity to drive a beat up VW van and sport a thin, limp gray-haired ponytail. It was shades of San Francisco which I thought had been left far behind. He was forever doing 40 in a 55. As a result I was forced to buzz him in my Eldo with the freeway sign at high mast.
Becoming involved in local politics indicates that some prairie hippies find their way to cushy civic boards where the locals are too polite to ask them to make use of the laundry, take a shower and shave. I’m working on them as well but with a bit more nuance.
Gaia’s Feline: Here poosy.
“because it was still earth hour, he opened the window to vent the smell instead of turning on a fan.”
…-
“Flaming cat puts a damper on earth hour for B.C. environment minister
VICTORIA — British Columbia’s Environment Minister Barry Penner has mixed emotions about earth hour this year.
Mr. Penner said he and his wife were celebrating the event with a candlelit dinner on Saturday night when things took a turn for the worse.
While the two were having dinner, their cat brushed against the candle’s open flame and set himself on fire.
“We quickly got our cat, whose name is Ranger, under control,” Mr. Penner said Monday.
“His hair is a little bit singed and his pride is somewhat affected,” he added, saying because it was still earth hour, he opened the window to vent the smell instead of turning on a fan.
“The odour of singed hair is never pleasant,” he said, adding the ordeal added unexpected excitement to the night.
“It will be a night we’ll remember for a long time.””
http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/posted/archive/2010/03/29/flaming-cat-puts-a-damper-on-earth-hour-for-b-c-environment-minister.aspx
…-
“Green think tank tells environmentalists: Leave climate change science behind
Leaders of a contrarian environmental think tank, The Breakthrough Institute, have a way to get beyond the climate science wars: Break the link between global warming research and the push for low-carbon energy.
Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, in a new essay in Yale Environment 360, argue that environmentalists are too eager to link natural disasters and dangerous weather to man-made climate change.
They say this is a losing hand that has been made even weaker by the furor over the now-infamous hacked climate science emails, and controversy surrounding the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
They write:
Climate science, even at its most uncontroversial, could never motivate the remaking of the entire global energy economy. Efforts to use climate science to threaten an apocalyptic future should we fail to embrace green proposals, and to characterize present-day natural disasters as terrifying previews of an impending day of reckoning, have only served to undermine the credibility of both climate science and progressive energy policy.
The essay also suggests that climate advocacy and research have become too intertwined, with environmentalists seeking to represent the science as “apocalyptic, imminent, and certain.” The science has been harmed as a result, they argue, stating:
Greens pushed climate scientists to become outspoken advocates of action to address global warming. Captivated by the notion that their voices and expertise were singularly necessary to save the world, some climate scientists attempted to oblige. The result is that the use, and misuse, of climate science by advocates began to wash back into the science itself.
They later conclude:”
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/89617-green-think-tank-to-enviros-leave-climate-science-behind
Herons don’t taste very good; the eagles can have them.