What the poor parents didn't realize? That they weren't in the woods, and they'd inadvertently made a home in the midst of screaming children, Park Slope Food Coop carts, parking cars, and stray cats.
Luckily (or not?), they'd also chosen a spot complete with a resident ornithologist and his ambivalent yet animal-loving spouse.
We were prepared to let nature run its course, until the hiccup: teeny tiny Blue Jay fallen from the nest. It was so ridiculously adorable, that I have to break my non-bird photograph vow right away:
I first noticed this when I got home one day to our next-door (Homo sapien) neighbor watching the little hatchling hobble around a water dish he'd put out for it. The neighbor was concerned, but about to leave on a trip, so I volunteered to be a bird foster parent. After a call to the birder-spouse, I put the chick - now named Albertine by our neighbor - into a cardboard box with nesting material, as seen above (note to all you future baby bird-finders: the #1 best thing to do is put the bird back into the nest, but in this case it was unreachable. Also, it's a myth that the parents won't care for it after human hands have touched it).
The biological parents, meanwhile, were NOT thrilled. Keenly aware of my intervention in their child-rearing, they squawked, dive-bombed, and got closer than made me comfortable. Trying to both a) save my face from Blue Jay mutilation and b) interfere as little as possible, Albertine was left in his box on a garbage can, close to the parents and siblings up in the nest.
I was hopeful, but my scientifically-minded and experienced birder-spouse tempered my optimism. He reminded me of the omnipresent dangers in our neighborhood: the stray cat who likes to hang around our backyard, the giant rats that own most parts of New York City, the hawks and falcons that occasionally fly by, even in urban environs.
Albertine survived all of these his first couple nights. He got bigger, grew some feathers, and even could fly up to our window before pathetically falling down again and hobbling around. Mom and Dad were clearly feeding him when we turned our backs (as evidenced by his healthiness and the bird poop all over the sides of the box).
Until, while I was away on a trip, Crazy Bird Lady (CBL) showed up. You know the type - she feeds a thousand pigeons at a time in the park, certain they will starve without her. Well, said Lady stumbled upon our toddling and hopping bird baby one day and got into a huge fight with my birder-spouse.
And herein lies the larger, philosophical question little Albertine poses: what obligation and right do we, as humans, have to intervene in the natural world?
CBL was convinced that her intervention was not only warranted, but absolutely essential. She rushed to the pet store, bought a syringe, and force-fed Albertine water, despite the ornithologist's insistence that baby Blue Jays actually don't drink water. When he told her to leave it alone and that the parents were rearing it, she was absolutely furious. Unconvinced by his scientific training, she wanted to take it immediately to a bird rescue center. An argument ensued, and my spouse was able to craft a compromise that involved taping the cardboard box up high in the tree, Albertine within, closer to the parents.
Sadly, a few days later, Albertine was gone. We're pretty sure CBL chick-napped him. It seems Albertine may have had a sibling that made it, but he didn't leave a name or number, so we can't follow up. The parents have moved on, and the nest lays abandoned.
Was CBL in the wrong? It's easy to have a gut reaction, but harder to decide what our overall role in these instances should be. It's likely that Albertine wouldn't have made it. On a few separate occasions we saw him hopping in the sidewalk, dodging fast-paced and oblivious pedestrians. Kids tried to pet him, much to his and his parent's dismay. The stray cat continues to lurk; we spotted him in the front yard just the other day, close to where Albertine once practiced flying. It's possible that CBL saved Albertine's life...that is, if he didn't die of starvation on the way to the rescue center (baby birds, in their early days, are fed about every 20 minutes).
On the other hand, Blue Jays are far from endangered species. They are well-adapted to urban life, and co-exist comparatively easily with humans and other animals. And, let's face it, if we rounded up all the bird hatchlings in NYC and guaranteed their survival through intensive care, we'd soon have more birds than our natural resources could possibly sustain. We'd also miss a lot of work and school.
This debate extends, of course, far beyond backyard birds. In Kruger National Park in South Africa, for instance, arguments over whether or not to cull elephant populations through carefully managed hunting licenses are frequent: these giant herbivores destroy areas in which they tread, threatening many other plant and animal species as their numbers rise within park boundaries. Thus, it becomes a question of prerogatives: do we aim for conservation of individual lives or biodiversity? Do we accept our already well-established role as meddlers in the natural world and try to turn destroyers into stewards of the Earth?
Or do we teach the next generation to just walk by little squeaking Albertine, since we know that stray cat is probably hungry?
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