My favourite Magazine...the spring 2011 edition.
Wingspan is the only magazine I get, or read, apart from Flight Safety which is also an avian fanzine. Maybe I’m bonkers because I read Wingspan from cover to cover, even the adds... I enjoy the information, photos and comments. I might add I cannot abide watching Masterchef, Australia’s Got Talent or football other than the Rugby World Cup which at last had its rightful and proper conclusion... moving on...
Male Mallard on the outlet of Lago Maggiore, Lombardy, Italy.
The spring, 2011 edition of Wingspan has a befuddlement of mixed messages, sensational journalism and confused morality. I’m anticipating Media Watch taking a swipe at Wingspan... and waiting... so I thought I might save them the bother and do it for them, being the global citizen that I am, assuming as you do that Wingspan represents the voice of Birds Australia.
“Lies, damned lies and statistics” has been attributed to either Mark Twain or Benjamin Disreali, who doubtless stole it from someone else, but now seems to have been adopted by Wingspan. The shock jocks at Wingspan in a burst of creativity calculated the number of ducks that could have been shot during the recent duck shooting season by multiplying the number of licensed duck shooters, the bag limit per day and the number of days in the season and came up with a total of a mere 18,000,000 ducks. This is plainly ludicrous because, and I’m using statistics here, working on an equally credible assumption that each duck shooter fires five shots to gun down each hapless duck and each shotgun shell has gazillions of steel shot packed into it; therefore, during the last season one hundred and sixty five billion steel balls were fired into the skies above Victoria and South Australia. This would account for a barrage not heard since the landings on D-day and would clearly result in deafening the entire population of Victoria, South Australia and into the bargain King Island and southern New South Wales. Furthermore, the weight of all this steel cascading down on Victoria and South Australia would cause them to sink below sea level providing a better habitat for the few remaining ducks. It may even cause the planet to go out of orbit, not to mention the magnetic interference of so much steel causing whales to go off track and beach themselves and I have not seen one whale beach itself in South Australia this year even though I’m in Italy at the moment.
Mute Swan on the river at Sesto Calende, Lago Maggiore... Swan Lago...
Appalled as I am by Wingspan’s unabashed molesting of statistics, the centre-fold graphically depicting a White-bellied Sea-Eagle attacking a Shy Albatross was an uncalled for glorification of cruelty in the natural world. Maybe this sort of thing goes on in nature (or on the news on tele) but to promote it so brazenly was to my mind unconscionable. Wingspan failed to mention that the poor old Albatross, who was minding his own business being shy, is now unquestionably dead as a duck having died of its wounds...
Anyway, anyway, anyway... next I came to Macquarrie Island; as I read Wingspan I travel about in my mind to all the places in the magazine... you see some of the reasons why I’v gone a bit loco.
Mute Swan paddles the water along with powerful wing beats to get airborne.
Maybe I march to the beat of a different drum but it seems to me that the ecology of a habitat is largely a balanced thing, especially in a geographically limited and isolated area such as an island which is several thousand miles from the nearest fast food outlet. So when humans, government departments and other calamities disrupt the order of things, repercussions are bound to happen. I got the impression that after the TP&WS removed all the cats from Macquarrie Island that it came as a belated surprise to them 10 years later when they discovered that rabbits suddenly eaten the place barren and in the process destroying the breeding habitat of many birds... duuuh! How many deaths, and lack of breeding potential did that effect. Then to top it off “Unfortunately” the method used to kill off the rabbits killed over 400 birds... how much over?
Maybe Macquarrie Island muddles the brain of those who go there... If a predator is totally removed from a closed habitat surely one would expect the “prey” numbers to explode. Maybe the experts thought the rabbits would be so sad to see the end of the cats that they would simply pack up and jump into the sea and swim to Tasmania where they could be eaten by Tasmanian cats. A sort of victim and offender dialogue program.
Black-headed Gull are common throughout Europe... a sort of EEC Gull... unlike the the Euro is likely to survive...
So on the one hand while duck shooters killing birds is totally unacceptable, on the other government departments killing birds is “unfortunate”. I’m not arguing against sensible and well planned intervention, it is often necessary. One would hope that the decision to do so when it’s needed is taken very seriously... by some!
There are a number of issues here. It seems that animal liberationists or what ever they call themselves are hijacking bird watchers by appealing to bird watcher’s sense of outrage with the killing of protected birds to bolster liberationists desire to see all cruelty to all animals banned. Many bird watchers no doubt support both intentions.
What can you say about a Coot...
The concept of preventing killing of animals on the basis of objecting to cruelty in the natural world, including by man, is plainly absurd. It has no morale or scientific rationale and even less consistent practical application. Objections to killing animals that have populations at risk is a different matter. Killing animals that are, or potentially may negatively impact their environment is commonplace and needed. How do animal liberations deal with the latter. The only way to is to play God and pick and choose who goes and who stays. Sadly it seems that many conservationists, animal liberationists and scientists are so caught up in their own misguided attempts to inflict human emotions on animals (there’s a word for that...) that they put themselves above God.
However, as Wingspan illustrates in this edition, death is not only part of the natural cycle of life, but also expressly done by governments and other organizations (including Birds Australia... see current removal of goats from Gluepot.) Attempts to paint shooters as irresponsible and I quote “ by any standards, self regulation by shooters was a failure”, is patronizing because another article in the spring edition, “Parrots and Permits” clearly portraits that many birds watchers are little better. Their desire to get “ticks” takes precedence over all of the consequences of their actions. Bird watchers themselves are clearly responsible for the unnecessary displacement and death of thousands of birds. By road kill on their bird watching travels; disturbance of habitat particularly during breeding; the now endemic use of phone apps to locate “ticks”; capture and release and by poorly managed scientific and research projects. Presumably hunters are killing the goats at Gluepot.
Great Crested Grebes are common in Europe and around the world including Australia.
If out of 18 million ducks that could have been shot only 75 protected birds were found dead then that’s an error rate of 0.0000041667... I love statistics... hunters should get an environmental award for their efforts, pity the TP&WS couldn’t do the same.
The world’s museums hold millions of skins of birds. These are an almost priceless resource for the study of birds, contribute immensely to future conservation as well as being the basis of most of the field guides we bird watchers enjoy. Almost all these birds were deliberately shot! Misplaced morality means that today this resource is slowly fading away and not being replaced. If cruelty was an issue in the days when most of these skins were collected then such a valuable asset would not be available today and science would be a lot worse off for it. Future science will regret our ill-founded short-sightedness.
The Italian Sparrow... a hybrid of the House and Spannish Sparrow... brown head instead of grey. 10,000,000 House Sparrows die in the UK because of mobile phone towers caused by bird watchers ringing their mates... a British tabloid reports... another reputed scientific publication.
The simple truth is hunting has been around for a lot longer than bird watching and is a normal human activity. Talking about goats; I’ll bet a dollar to a knob of goat dung that Wingspan won’t advocate banning the Luritja people, who so graciously assisted in the sighting of the Princess Parrots, from their traditional hunting. All death to animals involves cruelty and death is used to control animals for many reasons. There is no humane way to kill an animal. In fact death for animals in the natural world is a lot more drawn out and painful than by shooting. Just ask an albatross and a goat.
So, what is Birds Australia’s position on killing of animals? Is it a conservation organisation or an animal cruelty organisation or both? What is it’s policy and leadership on how bird watchers themselves are impacting our environment? It’s always better to condemn other’s faults than to clean up your own backyard.
Fog on Lago Di Como... Italy has had severe flooding this autumn.
Banning activities just drives them underground. Education and proper regulation of hunting areas and seasons achieves a result that is a workable compromise for all stakeholders. Birds Australia would be well advised to adopt a policy of included hunting organizations in their dialogue to minimize the impact on birds and particularly endangered birds.
Never-the-less, I’m going to continue to look forward to the arrival of Wingspan (in its Lord Howe Island polluting plastic bag - see “A Gutful of Plastic” ) in my mail box and as always, and read every word to boot. In South Australia our state magazine comes in a paper envelope... If Wingspan is tending towards becoming a tabloid then lets have a page three girl (or boy.. seeing we’re so insanely politically correct these days). Wingspan has been hoisted by it’s own petard. Seeing I’m in Italy I’m off the Verona for another scene of one of Shakespeare’s tragedies...
Sesto Calende, Lombardy, northern Italy.
Please note: the author is a Christian, member of BA and BirdsSA, no longer owns any guns and has no intention of duck shooting.... hoisted with his own petar” is from Hamlet... and is currently working in Sesto Calende, Italy.
