Bluebirds back home

Originally published 8 May 1989

If you are look­ing for the blue­bird of hap­pi­ness, it helps to have neigh­bors with mead­ows, hedgerows, fruit trees, organ­ic gar­dens, and nest­ing box­es designed espe­cial­ly for bluebirds.

I have such neigh­bors. My walk to work each day takes me through con­ser­va­tion land admin­is­tered by the Nat­ur­al Resources Trust of Eas­t­on, Mass­a­chu­setts. It would be hard to imag­ine a habi­tat more per­fect­ly suit­ed to a blue­bird’s needs. And there for the past three weeks I have been watch­ing blue­birds, the first in 24 years.

There was a time when blue­birds were as com­mon here­abouts as robins. Then, espe­cial­ly in the 50s and 60s, their num­bers took a nose­dive. A gen­er­a­tion of New Eng­lan­ders has come to matu­ri­ty with­out ever see­ing one of these gen­tle, beau­ti­ful birds. For some, the “blue­bird of hap­pi­ness” is a myth­i­cal crea­ture, invent­ed by Judy Gar­land, liv­ing some­where over the rainbow.

But blue­birds are real enough: elec­tric blue, robin-red breast­ed, plump, round-shoul­dered insect snatch­ers, flit­ting through hedgerows or the branch­es of a pear tree. Who can see a blue­bird and not be hap­py? The nat­u­ral­ist John Bur­roughs heard its song as “pur-i-ty, pur-i-ty.” Oth­ers hear “tru-al-ly, tru-al-ly.” No one with an ounce of sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty in their soul doubts that blue­birds are both pure and true.

Decline in numbers

What caused their decline? Blue­birds are hole-nest­ing birds; the replace­ment of wood­en fence posts with met­al posts and the prun­ing of dead wood from orchards elim­i­nat­ed many nat­ur­al cav­i­ties, and star­lings and house spar­rows dis­placed blue­birds from the few remain­ing nests. In recent years, friends of the blue­bird have set up thou­sands of nest­ing box­es all across New Eng­land, with holes sized to exclude star­lings, and these have undoubt­ed­ly assist­ed the blue­bird’s return.

But nest­ing holes aren’t the whole sto­ry. Severe win­ters took their toll on blue­bird pop­u­la­tions. Pes­ti­cides killed insects on which the birds feed. And of course, at the time of the blue­bird’s most pre­cip­i­tous decline, DDT was a like­ly culprit.

I last saw a blue­bird in Eas­t­on in 1965. It was the same year I read Rachel Car­son­’s Silent Spring, pub­lished a few years ear­li­er. Car­son­’s book exposed the mas­sive, indis­crim­i­nate use of pes­ti­cides, espe­cial­ly DDT, and gloomi­ly assessed the con­se­quences for the envi­ron­ment. Silent Spring was a trum­pet of doom and a clar­i­on call to action. It may be the most influ­en­tial book ever addressed to a pop­u­lar audi­ence by a scientist.

Rachel Car­son was a marine biol­o­gist with a blue­bird’s dis­po­si­tion. She was not by nature a rab­ble rouser or a pub­lic scold. She would rather have been remem­bered for her “sea” books, Under the Sea-Wind, The Sea Around Us, and The Edge of the Sea. She did not choose to become a founder of the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment in this coun­try; the issue of chem­i­cal pol­lu­tion chose her.

Accord­ing to Frank Gra­ham, author of Since Silent Spring, the stim­u­lus for action was a let­ter to Car­son from her friend Olga Huck­ins. Huck­ins and her hus­band main­tained a pri­vate bird sanc­tu­ary behind their home in Duxbury. In 1957 the state began aer­i­al spray­ing of dead­ly pes­ti­cides as part of a mos­qui­to-con­trol project. The Huck­ins land was repeat­ed­ly sprayed, and many birds were victims.

Those were the days when DDT was sprayed or dust­ed over half the land­scape as a weapon against Dutch elm dis­ease, spruce bud worm, gyp­sy moths, mos­qui­toes, and agri­cul­tur­al pests. The more Car­son looked into the use of chem­i­cal poi­sons, the more alarmed she became. Her book was a bril­liant, impas­sioned call to arms against entrenched inter­ests in gov­ern­ment, agri­cul­ture, and the chem­i­cal industry.

So suc­cess­ful was her call that with­in months of the book’s pub­li­ca­tion many states and for­eign coun­tries issued bans on DDT. In 1957 the US Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture sprayed 4.9 mil­lion acres with DDT; in 1968 the fig­ure had dropped to zero.

Still more poisons

DDT is no longer an issue, but huge amounts of oth­er poi­sons are still dumped into the envi­ron­ment. Like many of the gifts of sci­ence, insec­ti­cides and her­bi­cides have the poten­tial for good and harm. Every per­son will have a dif­fer­ent assess­ment of the ben­e­fits and dan­gers of pes­ti­cides, and of the prop­er lev­el of use for max­i­mum ben­e­fit to society.

Car­son her­self was not opposed to all pes­ti­cides. She vig­or­ous­ly opposed long-last­ing chem­i­cals like DDT. She sug­gest­ed that soci­ety had embarked upon an unthink­ing chem­i­cal binge, and that silent springs were a high price to pay for the cor­nu­copia of plenty.

One voice of spring now sel­dom heard is the blue­bird’s. The role of chem­i­cals in dri­ving blue­birds toward extinc­tion is debat­able, but the coin­ci­dence of the blue­bird’s rapid decline with the hey­day of DDT use is indis­putable. Insect-eat­ing birds are easy vic­tims of insecticides.

Agri­cul­tur­al inter­ests with their eye on the bot­tom line, and even back­yard gar­den­ers, are pow­er­ful­ly inclined to use the full arse­nal of chem­i­cal weapons to increase yields. Every­body wants pic­ture-per­fect lawns, healthy trees, and super­mar­kets stuffed with abun­dant pro­duce. The chem­i­cal indus­try urges us on with “yes, yes, yes.”

“Pur-i-ty, pur-i-ty,” the blue­birds call. And those who are pleased to see these delight­ful birds return to our neigh­bor­hoods can only answer “Tru-al-ly, tru-al-ly.”