A Little Knowledge

We've all seen the effects of what too little knowledge can do. Never mind politics -- even in our personal lives, we have all at one time or another been the unwilling or unwitting target of somebody who had less knowledge than they claimed. I remember one incident quite clearly. I was in sixth grade, and my mother had taken me to the Dominican Republic for one of those half-work, half-play vacations. We were wandering around Santo Domingo, completely lost and simply trying to get back to our hotel. Exasperated by her inability to navigate her way through this bustling Caribbean city, my mother finally stopped by a policeman and asked for directions. The policeman obliged, pointing out where to turn and waving us off with a big smile. Big mistake. We later learned that Santo Domingan police were one of the most underpaid workers in the nation, with little, including a basic knowledge of their own city's geography, provided to them by their superiors. I'm not sure where the police officer sent us to, but after another half hour of unwanted exploration, my mother finally called the hotel and had them send someone to pick us up.

It all leveled out in the end. My mother, too, operated on too little knowledge, only learning later from a colleague that policemen in Santo Domingo expect sizeable tips for their services and that the officer was most likely not waving us off but flagging us back down for his tip. What goes around, comes around.

I recently had the opportunity to attend a birding festival in a nearby county. I was greatly looking forward to attending this event, which was being held on a Nature Conservancy site. In addition to workshops on building nestboxes, seminars, and children's activities, there would also be booth from prominent local and state birding societies, such as our county's Audubon Society and our state's Bluebird Society. I was especially looking forward to the booth run by a regional habitat organization. This group supports the stand that, if you plant native trees, shrubs, vines, and other botanical species, you will provide the natural habitat for the birds that live in your area. With Forest's Edge's multiple acres, I was eager to learn what native plants I could use for a natural yet attractive and bird-friendly landscape.

As the lady running the booth chatted to the visitors who'd arrived before me, I looked at the information table and saw a curious wood contraption peppered with holes. It looked like a miniature covered bridge, except with only one opening. The other people had noticed it, too, and asked the woman what it was. To my surprise, she informed us it was a bluebird nest box!

Oblivious to the incredulous expression on my face, she went on to explain how bluebirds thrive in a well=ventilated next box, because the breezes keep moisture from accumulating in the nest. She noted that its long, horizontal design kept predators from reaching in to grab eggs and chicks, and it was shallow, which bluebirds liked.

Although my mind was envisioning having to plug all the ventilation holes every winter (so the box could be used as a winter roost), my eye quickly noted the absence of a front, top, or side panel that opened for easy monitoring and cleaning.

"How do you monitor it?" I asked.

The woman looked at me as if I'd asked something very basic. She snatched up the next box, and informed me that it attached to the top of a 4 X 4 wooden post. When I explained that I'd said monitor, not mount, she put the box back on the table and informed us, "You don't."

"You don't?" I repeated, not believing my ears.

"Oh, no!" said the woman, who then launched into a very verbose speech about how mother birds can detect human scent on their nests, eggs, and babies and that this may cause her to abandon them; that our skin oils on the box would draw predators; and that it was best to leave nature to nature.

Still in a state of incredulity, I asked what she did to prevent house sparrow predation. Her reply? Oh, if you see them hanging around, just shoo them away, but once they've nested there wasn't much you could do.

I left that booth stunned and completely unsuccessful in convincing the woman that her facts were incorrect. Bluebird societies abide by a main tenet: an unmonitored nest box is an open invitation to house sparrows, and it is better not to put up a nest box than to leave one up unmonitored for house sparrows to occupy. Similarly, the majority of birds have no or minimal sense of smell, so mother birds would not abandon nest, egg, or chick if a human interacted with it. Most of the threatened birds, like bluebirds and purple martins, are indeed tolerant of human intervention and would not be as populous as they are now without it. Having monitored nestling bluebirds, I myself had handled young birds and checked them for blowfly infestation and other issues, and those birds were now a quintet of juveniles who loved coming to gorge at my mealworm feeder. As for house sparrows, most bluebird societies approve the use of passive and active means to deter HOSPs, as they are called, since these invasive birds will maim and kill native birds ... something I learned firsthand recently, upon finding a juvenile goldfinch that had lost its life to a territorial juvenile house sparrow who was in no mood to share a bird feeder with it.

The woman's reply to my information was akin to, "You believe what you want to, I'll believe what I want to," and thus ended my interaction with her and her organization. I later learned that she was known throughout the state for her radical views on birds. I can't help but think of all the people she has minsinformed and all the bluebirds she may have endangered because she had only a little knowledge and refused to receive more.

This unfortunately was not the only encounter with folks of limited knowledge, at least as when it comes to birds. Our town recently hosted its annual community fair, complete with demolition derbies, colorful midway rides, cattle/hog/sheep displays, and baking contests. One of the arenas held the entries and winners of the Best Collections Contest. To my dismay, the blue-ribbon winner was a young man who had entered his bird's nest collection, complete with bluebird nest holding five pale-blue eggs.

I felt it my duty as a county coordinator for our state's bluebird society to notify the "superintendents" of this particular contest that they had awarded the top prize to an entry prohibited by federal law. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act makes it illegal to collect, possess, sell, buy, or tamper with native migratory birds, their feathers, their body parts, their nests, their eggs, and their babies. The US Fish and Wildlife Service goes so far as to counsel people to look but not touch or collect, not even bird feathers found on the ground. Exemptions are available through a lengthy application process with the US FWS, but I somehow doubted that this small-town teen boy even knew what he collected was against the law.

I am also certain that, given this additional knowledge, the fair superintendents chose to do nothing, although it was their duty to confiscate the entry and turn it over to FWS to destroy. My worry from all this? Other children and teens, and even adults, will now want to show an interest in nature and will start collecting nests and/or eggs, unwittingly tampering with the breeding cycle of native birds, some of which only nest once per season and only live for two seasons.

A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.