<![CDATA[Grist - Comment Feed for <em>NYT</em> op-ed: pesticides wiping out songbirds]]> Grist Comment Feed en Comment #1 by Colin Wright http://www.grist.org/article/birds-do-it-bees-do-it/ Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:04:56 -0700 http://www.grist.org/article/birds-do-it-bees-do-it/1 More bird problems in the NW...

The front page of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer today had a story on deformed beaks which we apparently are seeing in all sorts of birds out here (hawks, chickadees, sparrows,...). The "long-billed syndrome" could be related to pesticides but why would it be restricted to the NW?
"It looks like the entire (Northwest) Pacific Coast is being affected."

Research has shown scientists that:

Deformed beaks occur in resident and migratory birds.

A study of black-capped chickadees in Alaska showed "significantly higher" concentrations of a pesticide breakdown product, heptachlor epoxide, in adults with beak deformities than in normal adults. The same goes for a form of polychlorinated biphenyl, PCB, an industrial chemical.

Baby birds from deformed parents in Alaska had higher concentrations of two of the most toxic forms of PCBs.

Beak deformities were a feature of a syndrome that affected birds in the Great Lakes area in the 1970s that was associated with exposure to contaminants, including PCBs, dioxins and dibenzofurans. The same thing happened to birds exposed to high concentrations of selenium in California in the 1980s.

The Alaska chickadees with the deformity had a "highly significant" amount of damage to their DNA.
Alarming! Could nature be trying to tell us something? (Also I have recently observed protracted nose growth in Bush administration officials.)


]]> More bird problems in the NW...

The front page of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer today had a story on deformed beaks which we apparently are seeing in all sorts of birds out here (hawks, chickadees, sparrows,...). The "long-billed syndrome" could be related to pesticides but why would it be restricted to the NW?
"It looks like the entire (Northwest) Pacific Coast is being affected."

Research has shown scientists that:

Deformed beaks occur in resident and migratory birds.

A study of black-capped chickadees in Alaska showed "significantly higher" concentrations of a pesticide breakdown product, heptachlor epoxide, in adults with beak deformities than in normal adults. The same goes for a form of polychlorinated biphenyl, PCB, an industrial chemical.

Baby birds from deformed parents in Alaska had higher concentrations of two of the most toxic forms of PCBs.

Beak deformities were a feature of a syndrome that affected birds in the Great Lakes area in the 1970s that was associated with exposure to contaminants, including PCBs, dioxins and dibenzofurans. The same thing happened to birds exposed to high concentrations of selenium in California in the 1980s.

The Alaska chickadees with the deformity had a "highly significant" amount of damage to their DNA.
Alarming! Could nature be trying to tell us something? (Also I have recently observed protracted nose growth in Bush administration officials.)


]]> Comment #2 by caniscandida http://www.grist.org/article/birds-do-it-bees-do-it/ Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:52:34 -0700 http://www.grist.org/article/birds-do-it-bees-do-it/2 Electric eels, I might add, do it

Though it's shocking, I know;
Why ask if shad do it?:
Waiter, bring me shad roe!

(Notice that "eels" and "add" alliterate, in precisely the way it was done by Old English poets, e.g. the author of "Beowulf.")

So OK, Tom, different singers choose different parts of these lyrics to sing:
http://sozluk.sourtimes.org/show.asp?t=let+s+do+it

We happen to like the musical soundtrack from the wonderful 2004 movie "De-Lovely," starring Kevin Kline as Cole Porter, on which Alanis Morissette sings "Birds Do It, Bees Do It."

Cf. another Cole Porter song about sex, "Let's Misbehave," which Woody Allen used as the opening anthem of his 1972 classic (OLD Woody Allen!, pre-"Annie Hall"), "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask":

When Adam won Eve's hand,
He wouldn't stand
For reason;
He never cared about
Those apples out
Of season.

I happen to have been working as an usher in a movie theater in Wildwood, New Jersey, that summer, and got to see that movie over and over and over again.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.









]]> Electric eels, I might add, do it

Though it's shocking, I know;
Why ask if shad do it?:
Waiter, bring me shad roe!

(Notice that "eels" and "add" alliterate, in precisely the way it was done by Old English poets, e.g. the author of "Beowulf.")

So OK, Tom, different singers choose different parts of these lyrics to sing:
http://sozluk.sourtimes.org/show.asp?t=let+s+do+it

We happen to like the musical soundtrack from the wonderful 2004 movie "De-Lovely," starring Kevin Kline as Cole Porter, on which Alanis Morissette sings "Birds Do It, Bees Do It."

Cf. another Cole Porter song about sex, "Let's Misbehave," which Woody Allen used as the opening anthem of his 1972 classic (OLD Woody Allen!, pre-"Annie Hall"), "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask":

When Adam won Eve's hand,
He wouldn't stand
For reason;
He never cared about
Those apples out
Of season.

I happen to have been working as an usher in a movie theater in Wildwood, New Jersey, that summer, and got to see that movie over and over and over again.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.









]]> Comment #3 by caniscandida http://www.grist.org/article/birds-do-it-bees-do-it/ Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:05:45 -0700 http://www.grist.org/article/birds-do-it-bees-do-it/3 "environmental regulations"

I do not know if I have ever seen a bobolink, Dolichonyx oryzivorus ("having a long, narrow nail"; "rice-eating"), nor am I sure I would recognize one if I saw it.  The black-and-white "tuxedo" plumage, with a pale yellow nape, is that of the male, from March to August, as Stutchbury says.  Otherwise, they look like smaller, shorter-beaked meadowlarks, but less starling-like in shape, and more sparrow-like.

I vaguely remember a story in our fourth-grade readers (or thereabouts), about a bobolink.  Or was it a bobwhite -- a quite different kind of bird?  It just goes to show, natural history was not a great strength of Catholic parochial elementary education.

It is also an important quality of our civilization, that we are short-sighted, profit-oriented and anthropocentric, and do nothing to save non-human animals such as bobolinks, and do not even recognize their plight most of the time; but then, when they are gone, we cry over them and behave with great sensitivity.

We are such fools!

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

]]> "environmental regulations"

I do not know if I have ever seen a bobolink, Dolichonyx oryzivorus ("having a long, narrow nail"; "rice-eating"), nor am I sure I would recognize one if I saw it.  The black-and-white "tuxedo" plumage, with a pale yellow nape, is that of the male, from March to August, as Stutchbury says.  Otherwise, they look like smaller, shorter-beaked meadowlarks, but less starling-like in shape, and more sparrow-like.

I vaguely remember a story in our fourth-grade readers (or thereabouts), about a bobolink.  Or was it a bobwhite -- a quite different kind of bird?  It just goes to show, natural history was not a great strength of Catholic parochial elementary education.

It is also an important quality of our civilization, that we are short-sighted, profit-oriented and anthropocentric, and do nothing to save non-human animals such as bobolinks, and do not even recognize their plight most of the time; but then, when they are gone, we cry over them and behave with great sensitivity.

We are such fools!

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

]]> Comment #4 by Pangolin http://www.grist.org/article/birds-do-it-bees-do-it/ Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:08:12 -0700 http://www.grist.org/article/birds-do-it-bees-do-it/4 Those nasties will disrupt......

your breeding habits also. Everything that's getting into those birds systems is getting into yours also. Personally the reason I have so much time to blog is that my health is in the toilet due to environmental illness.

Like the song says...."Nobody loves you, when you're down and out."

Should those nasties disrupt your endocrine system the way mine is disrupted you pretty much won't care either. "Not tonight I have chronic liver pain, a back in siezure and arthritis" isn't going to get you another request anytime soon.

Wierdly enough eating healthy and staying away from all of those easily avoided vices won't help you all that much. Simply breathing or taking a shower can be enough to load your system with toxics in some areas. It's like an evil lottery.

Good luck with that.

Put the Carbon Back

]]> Those nasties will disrupt......

your breeding habits also. Everything that's getting into those birds systems is getting into yours also. Personally the reason I have so much time to blog is that my health is in the toilet due to environmental illness.

Like the song says...."Nobody loves you, when you're down and out."

Should those nasties disrupt your endocrine system the way mine is disrupted you pretty much won't care either. "Not tonight I have chronic liver pain, a back in siezure and arthritis" isn't going to get you another request anytime soon.

Wierdly enough eating healthy and staying away from all of those easily avoided vices won't help you all that much. Simply breathing or taking a shower can be enough to load your system with toxics in some areas. It's like an evil lottery.

Good luck with that.

Put the Carbon Back

]]> Comment #5 by caniscandida http://www.grist.org/article/birds-do-it-bees-do-it/ Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:39:18 -0700 http://www.grist.org/article/birds-do-it-bees-do-it/5 Toilets!

Oh, Pangolin!  How big of you to tell us!  I readily understand!  And, of course, I forgive EVERYTHING!  : )

But really, I am sorry to hear about your troubles.  We need to be up and leaping about, to keep these kids in line, and sometimes we can only do so much: hopefully that is an education in itself, for them, to get them to be patient with our decrepitude.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

]]> Toilets!

Oh, Pangolin!  How big of you to tell us!  I readily understand!  And, of course, I forgive EVERYTHING!  : )

But really, I am sorry to hear about your troubles.  We need to be up and leaping about, to keep these kids in line, and sometimes we can only do so much: hopefully that is an education in itself, for them, to get them to be patient with our decrepitude.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

]]> Comment #6 by Pangolin http://www.grist.org/article/birds-do-it-bees-do-it/ Tue, 01 Apr 2008 06:56:06 -0700 http://www.grist.org/article/birds-do-it-bees-do-it/6 Hey thanks,

In my real life I'm also a curmudgeon. It's that or take the herbal road to oblivion and I like to hear my brain cells squeak when I rub them both together.

Put the Carbon Back

]]> Hey thanks,

In my real life I'm also a curmudgeon. It's that or take the herbal road to oblivion and I like to hear my brain cells squeak when I rub them both together.

Put the Carbon Back

]]> Comment #7 by Colin Wright http://www.grist.org/article/birds-do-it-bees-do-it/ Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:16:30 -0700 http://www.grist.org/article/birds-do-it-bees-do-it/7 Pangolin, what big claws you have...

Pangolin, sorry to hear about your health also. Brings it home all the more why we're all here. From wiki:Pangolins lack teeth and the ability to chew. Instead, they tear open anthills or termite mounds with their powerful front claws and probe deep into them with their very long tongues

Or, is that the wrong image? :)

]]> Pangolin, what big claws you have...

Pangolin, sorry to hear about your health also. Brings it home all the more why we're all here. From wiki:Pangolins lack teeth and the ability to chew. Instead, they tear open anthills or termite mounds with their powerful front claws and probe deep into them with their very long tongues

Or, is that the wrong image? :)

]]> Comment #8 by Jon Rynn http://www.grist.org/article/birds-do-it-bees-do-it/ Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:33:50 -0700 http://www.grist.org/article/birds-do-it-bees-do-it/8 Curmudgeons are an evolutionary necessity

...one of the lessons I took away from Howard Bloom's "The Global Brain"

]]> Curmudgeons are an evolutionary necessity

...one of the lessons I took away from Howard Bloom's "The Global Brain"

]]>