Part Two of a conversation with Amadeo Rea, taxonomic ornithologist and ethnobiologist who has spent most of his life working with the Piman people of the greater south-western American deserts.
"All I had to do was walk on stage and open my mouth and let the curse of God roar through me. Floods, fire and frogs leapt out of my throat. Though I had no notion of that then, God was talking not just to me but through me, and his breath stank." Nick Cave, King Ink II.
The Crows tune up in the soft light. "We are just awake, but not ready yet" some say. "Go back to sleep" say others. The inevitable. Silence. A small croooaak. A waaaark. Crack!. Then ten and more giving full voice. Silence. Once more chuurrppp. Kwaaaark - kwaaaak. Much more now of the rattling, raucous corvid morning symphony.
A friend of mine, who was just finishing the manuscript for Birds of Arizona with the University of Arizona Press said “Why don’t you find out from your old Indian friends what the river was like when it ran and what birds were there?”
The real beauty of La Tanrrilla is only revealed when under threat or as part of their elaborate courtship rituals when they spread their glorious wings to reveal a truly magnificent display of colour and light.
Vultures have been called masters of two disciplines: soaring and sanitation (Dunne et al. 1988:136). In towns, villages, and rural communities where there is no modern plumbing or garbage disposal, they provide the only sanitation services. “They eat anything, but especially they like the shit,” observed a worker in a slaughterhouse in Guatemala.
Yanyuwa traditional owners established the li-Anthawirriyarra (people of the sea) Sea Ranger Unit as a means for managing their vast estate. The rangers are employed to monitor and manage heritage sites such as Macassan camps; monitor and manage turtle and dugong populations and survey, map and eradicate feral animals.
You folk, conch shells shall be! Bailer shells you shall become! Pearlshells you shall become! Ducks you shall become! Native companions be! I go! Better that I should go! For white pigeons will come with me!
Sternly worded letters to administrative staff of such corporations and combative encounters with shop-front staff, are only likely to have one outcome; the closure of such facilities to birders. Shop-front staff find dealing with insistent birders just as onerous and boring as birders find the process themselves. With management fielding complaints from both sides, it is easy to see the most expedient course of action for them to end the problem altogether.
The facts which kept me longest scientifically orthodox are those of adaptation—the pollen-masses in Asclepias—the misseltoe, with its pollen carried by insects and seed by Birds—the woodpecker, with its feet and tail, beak and tongue, to climb the tree and secure insects. To talk of climate or Lamarckian habit producing such adaptation to other organic beings is futile. This difficulty, I believe I have surmounted. From a letter to Asa Gray by Charles Darwin, 1857
