Exploding birds and other myths
I recently heard the old chestnut about gang members cutting off
women’s body parts as some sort of bizarre initiation rite again.
Its audience consumed the story with avid interest
– and not a hint of skepticism.
Exploding birds and other myths
I recently heard the old chestnut about gang members cutting off women’s body parts as some sort of bizarre initiation rite again. Its audience consumed the story with avid interest – and not a hint of skepticism.
I bit my cheek and chose to remain silent.
I’m not being callous about the loss of body parts. I chose only not to embarrass a group of people taken in by a popular urban myth.
When I worked as a newspaper editor, I was treated to a steady diet of them. Well-meaning people would call in, filled with anxiety, eager for us to spread the news of LSD doses on slips of paper that looked like Disney stickers, or blue stars, or anything else attractive to small children. Or they wanted us to spread the word about gang members who would shoot anyone who flashed high beams in an attempt to signal them (again, an initiation rite). Lately, the reports have favored bogus news about e-mail viruses.
Of course, all of these reports are completely false, their fallacies easy to determine. But we tend to believe what we hear or read, even as others continue to concoct the outrageous.
Birds carry their own burden of human mythology on their backs. I can almost guarantee that within a month of publication of this column, I’ll hear one or more of these repeated with the solemn authority of gospel verse. Nevertheless, in pursuit of truth, justice and the avian way, we’ll attempt to pluck the horsefeathers from these bird-brained ideas.
Don’t throw rice at weddings because it will swell in birds’ stomachs and kill them.
Rice farmers know better. They go to great lengths to discourage consumption of their crops, with limited success. Think about the ducks and geese covering California’s rice paddy’s right now.
We were pelted with birdseed at our wedding, birdseed that worked its way into the carpets of our car, and later sprouted when a window was left open during a rain shower. I still like the idea of birdseed at weddings, but rice is completely benign.
Alka Seltzer/Pop Rocks/etc. fed to gulls will cause them to explode.
If there was anything to this one, it would prove irresistible to many little boys with anti-social tendencies and we’d all be pelted with gull guts with some frequency. It never happens. Further, if that stuff actually made anything explode, do you think they’d sell it to kids?
We do love stories about things that blow up, though, don’t we?
Feeders (especially hummingbird feeders) should be taken down in winter.
This one is probably more prevalent in colder areas than ours, but I hear it annually around when our first frost arrives. The thought is that food will discourage birds from migrating to places they “ought” to be. Migration is bigger than your bird feeder, a desire driven by birds’ internal clocks, which are regulated by day length.
Keeping feeders clean is important to prevent spread of disease, but taking them down for longer than it takes to give them a good scrubbing is unnecessary.
Once you begin feeding, you must continue to do so, or “your” birds may starve.
No need to feel guilty, because most birds visit a host of food sources daily. Feeding birds is done primarily for your own entertainment. Birds are too adaptable to depend solely on your generosity.
Hummingbirds migrate by riding on the backs of geese
This one is too weird to argue about. They’re different animals, migrating to different places at different times of year. Enough said.
We must never touch nestlings, because parent birds will abandon them if we do.
This is the saddest rumor to me. Every year, well-meaning parents admonish their children not to touch the baby bird that has tumbled from its nest a few feet away. The baby is left exposed, where cats, jays or the elements will soon finish the job.
Parent birds certainly will not welcome undue intrusion, but scientists for many years have been touching birds of all ages as they conduct research. For heaven’s sake, replace the nestling if you can. The parent birds will not abandon their young as a result.
Did you hear the one about the snipe?
This one seems to be more popular among the British, but it has its counterparts here in the states as well. This one is more of a bird insiders’ story, but it’s my favorite.
The story always begins with the description of a rare, secretive bird, usually one of the rails or a snipe. These birds both lurk on the ground, and tend to seek cover, relying on camouflage before taking flight. A group of hard-core birders arrives to seek out their rare quarry, and in the course of the hunt, one steps on the bird, mortally wounding it. Usually, the story goes on to say that the other birders were most angry because the clumsy interloper picked up the bird to try to revive it. A bird in the hand is not “countable” under the rules of the game.
The bird band recipe
In this one, someone at the U.S. Department of the Interior gets a letter from a hunter who bagged a bird with a leg band stamped with the address of the Washington Biological Survey, where it was to be returned. The agency’s name had been abbreviated to Wash. Biol. Surv., and the hunter indicates in his letter that following those cooking instructions resulted in a less-than-tasty dish.
To my knowledge, leg bands have never been stamped with this unfortunate “recipe.”
Radio commentator Scoop Nisker used to end every show with the admonition, “if you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.” When it comes to birds, people seem to have acted upon his advice.
Mark Paxton lives in Hollister and works in Morgan Hill. His e-mail address is [email protected].
