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| The Gannets of Cape St. Mary's August 2011 |
Or world out of wack. Or “What? Me Worry?”
On August 8th this year,
thousands and thousands of gannets flew away, en masse, from their
nesting grounds on Cape St. Mary's, Newfoundland. Abandoning their
solitary chick. Gannets have only one chick a year and safeguard it
as we would our own babies. Both birds attending to its every need.
Word of mouth here spread the news.
Nothing was published on the phenomenon. (Bird watching at Cape St.Mary's is a huge tourist industry. )
I now see on a Google search that there
is finally something on this catastrophe in the Winnipeg Free Press where a biologist is attributing the
vanishing bird-parents to the higher temperatures of our oceans.
Daughter was driving through Quebec
recently and discovered, in a conversation with a local, that their
gannets were falling dead from the skies. A phenomenon never seen
before. A web search brings up nothing on this.
And this all brings to mind what other
serious environmental wake-up calls are not being publicised. Media being
bought and paid for like never before and all that.
Common Dreams struggles along, its lamp
still held high, bringing our attention to the arctic ice disaster on
a regular basis. The record breaking iceberg run past Newfoundland
this past few months was startling to many of us. We dared to
whisper: is this the last of the northern ice? How much is left?
And still we party, like there is no
day of reckoning tomorrow.
And sure, maybe it's all we're capable of doing.
