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Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Transcript: Why birds? John Muir Laws

I found this little video on the Audubon California YouTube channel. It is so great I decided to transcribe it here.

It is just the last minute and a half of a talk by Jack Laws at Richardson Bay Audubon Center & Sanctuary in September 12, 2012.

You can watch the original here.

Transcript:

“The last thought is 'Why birds?'

"I am continuously amazed and awed by birds. If you are interested in observing animals and you want to look at mammals, they all hide from you. So what do the biologists do—the naturalists leading the field trips? They're like, “Oh my gosh, there's some scat!” Right? And they get all excited about looking at animal scat because the mammals are all hiding. Nobody looks at bird scat—because the bird is actually out there in front of you doing their bird thing!

"People say, 'I can't draw that because they fly away.' Yes, that's the point. Because they can fly away, they can hang around, right? It's because they can fly that makes them such great subjects. They can take off any time they want. And they kind of go like, 'You going to catch me? I don't think so, you land-locked primate!' So they will be out there in front of you courting and feeding and preening and cleaning themselves and doing all these sorts of things.

"You want to see mammals? You can go to the zoo. You can look at a nature special. You can look at scat on the ground. But it's nothing compared to the opportunities to see the real wildness that birds give us every day.”

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