From the Editor

My very first memory of growing up in Chicago in the 1950s is of standing on the sofa looking out the window where, in the distance, I could see a drawbridge go up and down, setting a flock of pigeons in motion. Our two-flat was in a grimy old neighborhood, but those pigeons drew my eyes skyward. I also remember falling asleep to the comfortable cheeping of House Sparrows. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I ever saw warblers, egrets, hummingbirds, hawks, or even chickadees, but I’d been primed to appreciate them by my beloved city birds.

As the human population swells, more and more children grow up as I did, lucky to notice pigeons and sparrows. What author Richard Louv terms “nature deficit disorder” is the order of the day. But the natural world is like air—even if we’re aware of it only occasionally, we depend on it for our very lives.

Without understanding nature, we base decisions solely on other factors, and it’s often too late before we realize we’ve caused a disaster. Modern maps show a different Louisiana than the “boot” so familiar to children of my era. Engineering along the Mississippi River reduced the flow of silt that maintained the river delta. New Orleans wasn’t built below sea level—it sunk without that annual replenishment. Flooding along the river and natural delta provided abundant habitat for birds, rich soil for agriculture, and a buffer zone providing some protection against storms and floods.

Sacrificing coastal wetlands for development has been disastrous for many species, from Florida’s unique “Dusky” Seaside Sparrow, gone forever, to Wood Storks, suffering ominous nesting failures in recent years. Coastal development has also placed millions of human beings and their property in harm’s way. When we factor the needs of birds and other wildlife into our calculations, we help keep the world more beautiful, healthier, and less dangerous for us as well.

Most Americans are unlikely ever to notice a Seaside Sparrow or a Wood Stork. But the survival of these birds and countless others depends on an aware citizenry, and will one day be in the hands of little girls and boys whose eyes were first drawn skyward by city pigeons and who fell asleep to the comfortable cheeping of sparrows.

—Laura Erickson

For permission to reprint all or part of this article, please contact Laura Erickson, editor, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd., Ithaca, NY, 14850. Phone: (607) 254-1114. email: lle24@cornell.edu