For many of the birds once plentiful in Connecticut are in trouble: by 2006 CT Audubon had reported that half of the state’s native bird species were in decline and 17 percent were on the state’s "endangered," "threatened" or "species of special concern" lists. Loss of habitat is the major cause. Unless residents work to reverse this trend, much of the birdsong that we associate with spring could disappear forever.
Yet Judy points to strides that have been made already since she was a child, when Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring alerted the world to the perils of DDT and other pesticides. Once-endangered osprey now nest again, and bald eagles soar the thermals in the state’s valleys.
Caring for an injured barn swallow as a little girl offered her a window into the natural world that evolved into a lifelong passion and avocation; similarly she believes there are budding naturalists simply in need of a similar "ah ha" moment to galvanize them. Knowledge as an abstraction may be good in itself, but lives are all the richer for studying the natural world, learning from it, and being awed by it. As Mabel Osgood Wright foresaw, the key to reversing the often-sterile landscape of today’s backyard may not rest with adults but with their better-educated children.
©2011 Kristin Nord for SeniorWomen.com
- People of the Whirlpool by Mabel Osgood Wright at Project Gutenberg
- Citizen Bird
Scenes from Bird-Life in Plain English for Beginners - The Garden, You, and I
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