Birds and Bugs

First, The Bird

 Two new books have been published and they relate to subjects covered in Mulcahy’s Miscellany. Considering the posts and the books together may be useful for both the readers of the books and of this blog. 

The Bald Eagle

   This book just came out and I have not read it. I have read two reviews of it, however, and both indicate that Davis deals with a question which is typically put this way: Could eagles snatch children and carry them away? That question is the first issue raised in the review found in The Atlantic, March 2022.  The author of the book does not think it possible.

"Jack E. Davis wants it very clearly understood that a bald eagle cannot, in fact, pluck an infant girl from her carriage, carry her clenched between its talons to its nest, and feed her to its eaglets. Okay?

If Davis’s plea seems especially plaintive, that’s because it contradicts centuries of personal testimony and expert accounts. Alexander Wilson, in his foundational American Ornithology (1808–14), described a bald eagle dragging a baby along the ground and flying off with a fragment of her frock. The naturalist Thomas Nuttall wrote in 1832 of “credibly related” accounts of balds abducting infants, and the 1844 edition of McGuffey’s Reader, a primer in most American grade schools, told the story of an eagle that deposited a girl in its aerie on top of a rock ledge, amid the blood-spattered bones of previous victims. As recently as 1930, an ornithologist with the Geological Survey refused to rule out baby snatchings in congressional testimony. Davis’s defense rests on the finding that a bald eagle’s maximum cargo capacity is five pounds. Although he acknowledges that eagles do fly off with chickens, the five-pound limit puts most newborns out of range. Still, in fairness to Wilson, Nuttall, and McGuffey, it should be noted that the average female birth weight in the 19th century was barely over six pounds."

   Dr. Davis has both a Pulitzer and a Ph.D and hardly needs my assistance. I am sure he is a very good and diligent researcher, but I doubt if his references include Mulcahy's Miscellany.  That is not his fault, but if google had located my post relating to the subject, it could have saved him a lot of time. Apart from my blog being un-promoted and unknown, there is the fact that searching for the two words with such ubiquity - 'eagles' and 'children' - yields results numbering in the many millions. The eagle is both a bird and a symbol and there are thousands of teams, streets and products containing the word. It is likely that the 'eagle' in Mulcahy's Miscellany was overlooked.

    "Eagle Attacks Child" is the post that examines the question raised above. Apart from the basic post, there is appended to it, an over 50 page pdf which includes annotated accounts of over 100 reports covering the period from 1825 to 1990. Appended to those reports are three appendices: Appendix 1: Eagle Sizes;  Appendix 2: Eagle Lifting Capacities (including a sub-section on "Owl Lifting Capacities;" and  Appendix 3: Other Victims of Eagle Attacks (which includes such victims as deer, dogs and even a kangaroo.)

I conclude that it is unlikely that children were carried away, but that it is highly likely some were attacked.  The link to the post is provided above and at the bottom of it you will find a link to Avian Abductions. 

   My interest in eagles has passed, but I am interested in how my references compare to his. If you read the book, please let me know. 

Sources: 

   In addition to the review in The Atlantic, here is one from the Wall Street Journal, Feb. 19, 2022, with the portion relating to 'eagle snatching', and to the Montreal incident which was what led me to do the research about the subject:

"One of the enduring myths around the bald eagle is the notion that it routinely snatches defenseless animals -- and not only lambs, pigs or calves. From time immemorial there have been stories about eagles carrying off human babies. An early silent movie, "Rescued From an Eagle's Nest" (1908), feeds this ancient fear, depicting a bald eagle, flapping its wire-controlled wings, as it steals an infant and hoists it into the sky. The heroic father in the film (played by D.W. Griffith, who would go on to fame as director of the racist epic "Birth of a Nation") eventually bludgeons the prop eagle to death, throwing it off a cliff before joyfully reuniting with his child.

More than 100 years later, a 2012 video created by animation students in Canada showed much the same scene. That video was quickly exposed as a hoax, but not before it garnered two million hits on YouTube in its first 24 hours. Mr. Davis is unable to find any variation on this myth that stands up to examination. The problem is that the real bird maxes out at about 14 pounds (for a very large female, which, on average, is 20% larger than a male) and can't lift more than half its weight. An eagle's bread and butter is fish, although there are stories of eagles carrying off small cats." [article author, Bill Heavey.]

The Bonus:

   In 2020 I did an Eagle Update which involved an account in Chatham, Ontario where it had been reported that an eagle lifted a teenage boy from a golf course. Have a look and then also read about Canada's very own Eagle Man - Charles Broley. 

Now, the Bugs

   Having just answered the eagle question we will now turn to a question relating to insects: "When Did You Last Clean Bug Splatter Off Your Windshield?" That is the title of a review of a new book which answers it: The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World, by Oliver Milman (the review by Thor Hanson is found in the NYT, March 5, 2022.)

   Mulcahy's Miscellany has already dealt with this subject so I will say little more about it.  For another book and more references relating to the "insectageddon" see in MM: Insect Elegy, 2017 and Insect Apocalypse, 2018. For newcomers to this issue, I will provide some information about this new book.

"Anyone with a car has gathered data on insect declines. Entomologists call it “the windshield effect,” a relatable metric neatly summed up by a question: When was the last time you had to clean bug splatter from your windshield? This ritual was once an inevitable coda to any long drive. Now, we’re far more likely to watch those same landscapes pass by through unblemished glass, mile after empty mile....

Those concerns lie at the heart of the environmental journalist Oliver Milman’s gripping, sobering and important new book. He, too, delves beyond the headlines, refreshingly willing to embrace the complexity of the issue....

Blame for the crisis falls on broad biodiversity threats like habitat loss and climate change, as well as insect-specific challenges from light pollution and the rampant use of pesticides. But Milman draws particular attention to the way industrial agriculture has transformed once-varied rural landscapes into vast monocultures. Devoid of hedgerows or even many weeds, modern single-crop farms simply lack the diverse plant life necessary to support an insect community."

The Bonus:

   While revisiting this subject, I learned that there is yet another book about the loss of insects. It is: Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse, Dave Goulson. 

A terrific book…A thoughtful explanation of how the dramatic decline of insect species and numbers poses a dire threat to all life on earth.” (Booklist, Starred Review)

In the tradition of Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking environmental classic Silent Spring, an award-winning entomologist and conservationist explains the importance of insects to our survival, and offers a clarion call to avoid a looming ecological disaster of our own making.

More self-promotion. See my related post about crickets and London - Entomophagy. 

Post Script:

   I am sure that if you attempt a search for information about 'neonicotinoids', you will first get 'hits' about 'neocolonialism.' Perhaps we should shift some of our concern to the future rather than the past.