“Bobolink bobolink spink spank spink; call is a metallic pink.” This is how my “Birds of Illinois” guide describes the bubbly, musical “voice” of Dolichonyx oryzivorus, known to the ornithologically minded as the bobolink.
I know this only because in June I spent a few weeks’ worth of Sunday strolls being driven nearly insane trying to identify the amusing trill of something unknown to me — a bird I’d come to call the “R2D2 Bird” since it sounded like the little metallic Star Wars robot.
But in the time it took me to get a hold of a birding guide and a monocular, the bobolink and its brethren had taken off for grassier meadows. I have only a memory of its chirp, an illustration of its mostly black body and the hope that I’ll get to see many more before all the bobolinks are gone for good.
Though I had thought it was remarkable that I’d never before heard or seen this very pretty bird, it’s now even more special since the bobolink has been named one of the 230 U.S. bird species the U.S. Fish Wildlife Service has identified, in their 2014 State of the Birds report, as most in need of conservation action.
Released on the 100th anniversary of the extinction of the passenger pigeon — which, incredibly, was once the continent’s most abundant bird, exceeding 5 billion and darkening North American skies for days at a time when they migrated — the report will mean little to people without an affinity for birds.
I can only barely excuse myself from that sad bunch. Had it not been for a bird that sounded like a George Lucas astro droid, I might have never bothered to learn how many different types of birds hang out in my state (431 species, as of November 2003), much less attempt to spy them up close.
Like most other people, I take birds for granted. They’re out there, they chirp when the weather is nice, sometimes they make a mess on your car or elicit a smile by alighting on a branch near enough to see eye-to-eye.
But generally speaking, birds are a given; they fly across the sky as they always have and all is right with the world. Right?
As with seemingly all things related to our breaking-down Earth: not so much.
While fewer sky animals might not seem like a big deal — there are, after all, plenty still around — it’s not just the shrinking number of beauties in the world that should concern us but what their diminishment says about our own future.
Self-interest isn’t the conservationist’s mantra, but it’s the sentiment that connects the dots for people. Birds’ habitat loss and fragmentation are really a reflection of the state of the nation’s lands. To speak in the most banal generalities: The Western birds with fewer desert and sagebrush homes and, in the middle of the country, those with declining grasslands and wetlands are warnings either that invasive species are poised to make an expensive entrance or that overdevelopment or pollution is throwing off the balance of local ecosystems.
Humans, though much bigger and hardier than tiny, hollow-boned birds, are not immune to the havoc that environmental decline can have on communities across all geographic regions and income brackets. After all, though we might not share a hunger for worms and bugs, we all need clean water.
In her eyebrow-raising book “The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability,” author Lierre Keith writes passionately about how human intervention is throwing many regions’ delicate water sources out of whack through irrigation.
Noting species of birds who are suffering as a result, Keith concludes: “I won’t belabor this, the list of birds is a roll call of the damned and it stretches from here to hell. And any bird dependent on a river will find its name written there because I also have a list of rivers, rivers I’ve never even heard of, that are being destroyed for irrigation. They’re being diverted and drained to grow crops like wheat, rice and cotton and also for industrial processes like hydroelectricity and dye works.”
If birds provide a sobering preview of our own future, then they at least deserve our contemplation. Do yourself a favor: Look up once in a while, and wonder what we’ll soon be missing.
Cepeda is a columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group.