pjthompson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pjthompson) wrote2004-04-13 11:29 am
pjthompson) wrote2004-04-13 11:29 am
Entry tags:
I'm Full of #$*!
Again, something anyone with even a passing acquaintance of me has probably already realized. But in this instance I'm publicly full of #$*! in the pages of my very own blog. (Well, I guess that's not so unusual, actually.) In my entry of February 3, I was whinging and whining about the development of a tract of wetlands, one of the last wild stretches along the SoCal coastline. I was deploring the "improvement" of said wetland to make it more palatable for the rich folk who were encroaching on it, how it had scared away all the wild birds I used to see there. I still maintain that the condo complexes going up across the street are hid-e-ous. . . but I saw a great gray egret while I was driving by there Saturday night!
I was so excited I told my dinner companions that night. Ann, who goes birding now and then and is friends with rabid birders, said, "Oh yes, I know X, one of the environmentalists who got the Playa Vista people to agree to leave the wetlands alone. He says the first couple of years, when they were cleaning out the soil contaminated by Hughes aircraft and bulldozing and improving the drainage, there were far fewer birds. But now that everything's been fixed, they're seeing birds that they haven't seen in twenty years—tons of them."
Ahem. Just not by the side of the road, I guess.
Okay, so I believe in admitting when I'm wrong, and I was wrong about this. If Playa Vista had gotten their way there would have been condos all the way to the sea, but once they committed (were forced) to the preservation of the wetlands, they did a good job.
What do you know? Sometimes the good guys do win. That same day, we learned that a stretch of pristine grassland up near Calabasas that environmentalists have been fighting for years to save from another damned golf course (a Bob Hope production) was officially declared wilderness land. Huzzah! A wonderful place for horseback riding, hiking, and natural things.
We were wondering, though, over dinner as we looked out over the harbor at Marina del Rey watching a seal sport in the water, how all those birds who had been gone for the last twenty years found out about the improved conditions in the wetlands. Is there some kind of secret bird email network? Do they each have their chatty or confessional or ranting blogs where they catch each other up on what's going on in their lives and their environments? Or perhaps a Ballona Creek Wetlands web site just for birds? Or maybe it's something more basic and old-fashioned: psychic emanations from the Bird Star Squawkidon? Personally, I'm putting my money on the crows, which are ubiquitous creatures, spying and scouting everywhere. If you've ever looked one of them in the eye, person-to-crow, you get to know very quickly that there's a keen intelligence behind those eyes and probably a whole secret world going on inside their heads. And furthermore (nevermore?) they're always squawking about something. Kind of like jungle drums, maybe, with secret coded messages in the rhythms?
Squawkidon rules.
I was so excited I told my dinner companions that night. Ann, who goes birding now and then and is friends with rabid birders, said, "Oh yes, I know X, one of the environmentalists who got the Playa Vista people to agree to leave the wetlands alone. He says the first couple of years, when they were cleaning out the soil contaminated by Hughes aircraft and bulldozing and improving the drainage, there were far fewer birds. But now that everything's been fixed, they're seeing birds that they haven't seen in twenty years—tons of them."
Ahem. Just not by the side of the road, I guess.
Okay, so I believe in admitting when I'm wrong, and I was wrong about this. If Playa Vista had gotten their way there would have been condos all the way to the sea, but once they committed (were forced) to the preservation of the wetlands, they did a good job.
What do you know? Sometimes the good guys do win. That same day, we learned that a stretch of pristine grassland up near Calabasas that environmentalists have been fighting for years to save from another damned golf course (a Bob Hope production) was officially declared wilderness land. Huzzah! A wonderful place for horseback riding, hiking, and natural things.
We were wondering, though, over dinner as we looked out over the harbor at Marina del Rey watching a seal sport in the water, how all those birds who had been gone for the last twenty years found out about the improved conditions in the wetlands. Is there some kind of secret bird email network? Do they each have their chatty or confessional or ranting blogs where they catch each other up on what's going on in their lives and their environments? Or perhaps a Ballona Creek Wetlands web site just for birds? Or maybe it's something more basic and old-fashioned: psychic emanations from the Bird Star Squawkidon? Personally, I'm putting my money on the crows, which are ubiquitous creatures, spying and scouting everywhere. If you've ever looked one of them in the eye, person-to-crow, you get to know very quickly that there's a keen intelligence behind those eyes and probably a whole secret world going on inside their heads. And furthermore (nevermore?) they're always squawking about something. Kind of like jungle drums, maybe, with secret coded messages in the rhythms?
Squawkidon rules.
no subject
Personally, I've always suspected you were full of something fertile -- it's good to be proved right every so often.
Glad the birds are back.
no subject