Because now even remote places in the countryside are being overly developed for real estate, many other species are being displaced from their homes and here we ask the ethical question: is it fair?
Humans, a species well known for its selfishness and nearsightedness, would of course say it is only fair that available lands are turned into homes. Human population is growing at exponential rates, while land, sadly stays the same. The regrettable reality that we share this land with other organisms like birds, insects, and trees is merely coincidental and negligible. We say, tough luck for the trees. Fuck the insects.
Last year, as we went to visit our property in the south, we drove through vast tracks of empty land meant for subdivisions, but still filled with riotous plant life. Here and there, one may espy runaway streams with variegated stones. My heart just throbbed unconsciously at all that beauty. Suddenly, a bird, exquisite in plumage (it had long black and yellow iridescent feathers, to which my father-in-law upon being told the story said was probably an oriole) flew abreast of the car and P and my jaw literally dropped to the ground in astonishment at the sight and after it flew away, we sat quietly and pondered the ghastly role we play in pushing that bird out of its home and maybe eventually to extinction.
What will life be without beautiful birds? J. Franzen, an incredible nonfiction writer and serious birder, wrote in The Discomfort Zone: “What I felt for (birds) went beyond love. I felt outright identification.” In an earlier passage in the same book he said, “I came upon a particularly charmless stretch of muddy sand on which there were a handful of more common shorebirds, dunlins and semipalmated plovers and least sandpipers . . . Camped out amid high-rise condos and hotels, surveying the beach in postures of sleepy disgruntlement . . . like a little band of misfits. Like a premonition of a future in which all birds will either collaborate with modernity or go off to die someplace quietly.”
At our condo, I was surprised one day to hear birds chirping over the din of TV and (nearby) construction. I went to peer at the balcony and sure enough, there they were, ON my balcony, mayas, flitting between the metal bars and pecking on the ground at imaginary food. Mayas, hardy and ever adaptable, now apparently also live in high-rises. I saw some of them flying toward eaves and some may actually be building nests and growing babies under the lobby roof.
But what of the delicate-looking bird in the country? I can only pray that it too can find a hospitable home substitute. Maybe unlikely, but hopefully not all together impossible.