{"id":158,"date":"2011-05-13T00:00:16","date_gmt":"2011-05-13T08:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/taojones.net\/?p=158"},"modified":"2011-05-14T23:15:15","modified_gmt":"2011-05-15T07:15:15","slug":"watching","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/?p=158","title":{"rendered":"Rasputin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Watching<\/a>
\nWatching<\/a>, a photo by Tygh<\/a> on Flickr.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once upon a time, I hated starlings. These birds are really aggressive and ferocious. They eat everything in their destructive paths, evict other cavity nesters and make life generally difficult for native species.<\/span><\/p>\n

A starling will devour a cake of suet in about the same amount of time it takes to put a new one out. The rudeness of these creatures is just appalling. …and there is never just a single starling. <\/span>In my early days of birding, I was at a loss for how to control our local population of these demons.<\/p>\n

Somehow during all this, it dawned on me that the existence of a pellet gun, along with the skill to use it could potentially address the problem. I had been an expert marksman in the military and I was confident that I had the technical ability. On the other hand, I was also a vegetarian who was appalled by what I felt was unnecessary cruelty at the center of the way we produce food.<\/p>\n

In retrospect, it was a ridiculous notion. Making a dent in the population would have required a pile of starling bodies that would have made Buffalo Bill blush. I’m going to skip to the end of this story and tell you that I made no such pile of carcasses, but I didn’t take the high road either.<\/p>\n

There was a single starling casualty at my hands. It was supposed to be clean and simple… a single shot and one demon less. I don’t want to go into the details of what happened, but I am compelled to write that the ferocity these birds show at the feeder is a reflection of the way they cling to their lives. An animal that will fight a dozen other birds for a scrap of food is not going to just die quietly.<\/p>\n

Underestimating that animal’s tenacity was a hard lesson for me. I gained a respect for the individual, and the species that will always be a part of me. I still don’t like wasting bird food on them, but once in a while I allow myself to stare back at a starling and I am haunted by the knowledge of its fierce heart beating within.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Watching, a photo by Tygh on Flickr. Once upon a time, I hated starlings. These birds are really aggressive and ferocious. They eat everything in their destructive paths, evict other cavity nesters and make life generally difficult for native species. A starling will devour a cake of suet in about the same amount of time … Continue reading Rasputin<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-light"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163,"href":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions\/163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taojones.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}