I work with an environmental non-profit that combines environmental education and hands-on restoration projects, working with students and teachers at elementary and middle schools to create, restore, and enhance habitat. We focus on programs about stormwater, wetlands, habitat, vegetable gardens, and native plants, building long-term relationships with our school partners, turning desert turf-scapes into lush nature areas, reducing stormwater runoff and creating native habitat.
While working with an after-school program at one of our schools, a teacher came up and asked if I could help with a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest. I went outside to the playground, and several teachers and elementary-age kids were clustered around a baby bird that had fallen from a nest in the overhang to one of the school entrances. They were circled close around the bird in a kind of hushed hallow, but clearly didn't know what to do. They wanted someone to make it all better.
It was a sacred moment for them, but I had to get back to the kids I was working with, so I told the teachers just to leave the bird be, and I'd come back in a half-hour.
I was working in the school courtyard with a group of students, creating a small wetland area and enhancing habitat for the 4 box-turtles they had. The courtyard had a goldfish pond, and some non-native bushes and trees, but otherwise was pretty inert, habitat-wise - turfgrass, hard-packed ground and pavement. It was amazing to me that the turtles had survived for several years in such a hostile environment.
From the school's perspective, the turtles were thriving - they were even having babies every year. From my perspective, that the turtles could survive here was testament to their amazing resilience, and I knew the babies were dying every year because there was nothing for them. I had started researching what their habitat needs were, and thinking about how we could make the courtyard a better place for them.
After we finished with the kids, my partner Tina and I went out to check on the bird, who had been "safely" placed under a styrofoam bowl. Tina has wildlife rescue experience, so she checked the bird, felt it was already pretty cold, although it was a pretty warm day. I climbed up and put the bird back in the niche in the overhang from which it had fallen, where the parents had created a nest.
There is something special about cradling and tending a young bird, but I didn't feel that this one had good odds of survival. It had been pushed by siblings or fallen from the nest once, and likely would again, if it recovered from the stress of this incident. I'd considered taking it out to the small cluster of trees beyond the playground, so that at least when it died, it would have gone back into the cycle of life, rather than making a bunch of kids sad the next day, or inconveniencing the janitors.
Afterwards, I wondered why my reaction had been so different from the teachers on the playground, who'd been so worried about the bird, and wanted to make everything right. I hadn't said anything at the time, but I'd found their concern and helpless solicitude annoying. But why was I reacting so callously to such a clear moment of compassion for another living being?
Because I consider schoolyards to be mostly deserts and deathscapes. Not much of anything can live there. Where they saw a fallen bird, I saw a lack of habitat, and where they wanted to make things better for that fallen bird, I was frustrated that we weren't all working together to plant native trees and create habitat. The bird was doomed because it fell from something that wasn't a tree into an unnatural environment, a world of brick and pavement and hard-packed dirt. Its parents had built the nest here because there weren't adequate trees and forest nearby.
The fallen bird wasn't the problem, it was a symptom - habitat loss and human disturbance were the problem. And while the teachers and students were genuinely concerned about the wellbeing of this being, they weren't able to see the bigger picture, and I didn't have a graceful way of explaining it at the time.
I like the work that I'm doing, because I get to work on topics like this. And I didn't have the right thing to say that time, but I'll be better prepared next time. Environmental issues like this seem so obvious to me that I assume that they're clear to others, which is not the case.