The Best of: Birds

foreign [Music] on September 1st 1914 an elderly Widow named Martha passed away in the home where she had been taken care of for the later years of her life named after Martha Washington she was truly extraordinary she lived nearly twice as long as the rest of her family as she aged her caretakers had to rebuild her home because she became too old to climb stairs and yet she continued entertaining her many guests despite a palsy that made her quiver and when she finally died peacefully of a stroke in her sleep the world mourned because Martha was one of those very rare creatures called an Ender meaning that she was the very last of her species not 40 years before Martha had had billions of brothers and sisters but when she died in her cage in the Cincinnati Zoo it represented the end of an era because Martha was the last passenger pigeon on Earth and her death represented the startling Extinction of what had only recently been one of the world's most profligate creatures you can't say that passenger pigeons are forgotten history everybody knows what passenger pigeons are as a cautionary tale of human hubris but they're passing changed the world in ways that people don't understand the life when passenger pigeons was around is different in ways that are forgotten today the time of the passenger pigeon is history that deserves to be remembered their numbers were of course amazing the famed ornithologist John J Audubon documented a time in 1813 when giant flocks of passenger pigeons passed him for three days straight he tried counting the number of flocks that passed and finally gave up as so many flew by that keeping up was not practicable on his first attempt he counted 163 flocks passing in a period of just 21 minutes in 1866 one flock in Southern Ontario was described as being one and a half kilometers wide and 500 kilometers long the [ __ ] took 14 hours to pass and held in excess of three and a half billion Birds there were so many birds that one American Rider suggested that if all the world's passenger pigeons flew single file they would have stretched around the earth 22 times these are more than just numbers they represent a truly dominant species researchers assert that when their population was at its height passenger pigeons may have been the most numerous bird on Earth One researcher contended that this one species accounted for between 25 and 40 percent of the total land bird population in the United States and so in the cautionary tale about the bird's Extinction there is another story how was life different in the time when passenger pigeons blotted out the sun pigeons are of course a common sight today an estimated 1 million live in New York City but the pigeon experience was rather different in the era of the passenger pigeon a terrifying account from 1855 had residents of Columbus Ohio so startled by a kit the term for a group of passenger pigeons that blocked out the Sun that women and children screamed and ran for home and some people dropped to their knees in prayer after the kit passed the scene was described as ghostly as the bright Sun illuminated a town turned white by being covered in Pigeon poo and while the image of a poo covered Columbus Ohio might be startling it's it's really more important than just some level of astonishment the pigeons in their poo were so prolific that they literally changed the environment of North America take for example the White Oak before European settlement Oaks dominated the forest throughout much of what is now the Eastern United States and Among The Oaks the White Oak Reigns Supreme its range once included every state east of the central plains early botanists claimed that vast areas of the Eastern Forest were nine tenths white oak by contrast its cousin the red oak jelly made up only a small percentage of Eastern forests around maybe five percent and the red maple was almost unknown in the forests of the Northeast this was important economically White Oak is a particularly valuable wood in fact in terms of the quality and quantity of Saw Timber White Oak was arguably once North America's most valuable hardwood species used extensively for construction flooring and Cabinetry because of its ability to resist Decay White Oak is often used in boat building and is particularly good for outdoor use such as decks moreover due to its cellular structure the lumber of white oak is particularly impervious to liquids making it particularly valuable for the making of barrels and casks used in the making of barrel-aged spirits like wine and whiskey but there is more liquid Spirits interact with the wood in their casks and the seasoning and heating treatments during the barrel making process result in the production of a pleasant tasting Oak lact tones the process for the creation of Cask is a closely held Secret by Barrel makers called Coopers and he's part of what instills the character of each distilleries unique creation White Oak commonly referred to as American Oak is the most commonly used Variety in whiskey Cooperage worldwide and by U.S regulation bourbon whiskey must be aged in charred American White Oak barrels put simply if you have a favorite scotch or bourbon or you like a particularly aromatic wine you like the taste of white oak but American White Oak is disappearing that's a one 2003 study noted the White Oak decline throughout its range has been dramatic in response to this decline it is largely being replaced by less valuable Red Oak and red maple so what you may be thinking does this have to do with passenger pigeons well actually quite a lot the bird is believed to have played a significant ecological role in the composition of the forest of Eastern North America and especially the former prevalence of White Oaks White Oaks germinated in the fall therefore making it seeds almost useless as a food source during the Spring breeding season while Red Oaks produced acorns during the Spring where they were devoured by the pigeons the effect of the massive amount of pigeons resting on Forest was dramatic they would leave massive amounts of broken foliage that were flammable encouraging both the frequency and intensity of forest fires which then favored fire tolerant species such as white oak over less tolerant species such as red oak and Maple and the same pigeon poo that turned Columbus Ohio ghostly was produced in such quantities that at nesting sites it destroyed surface level vegetation while adding huge quantities of nutrients to the soil this favored the White Oak which requires a sunlight to thrive by contrast the forest today without the natural clearings that the passenger pigeon helped to produce favored trees like red maple that thrive in shade selective logging and fire suppression have had their effect and yet the extinction of the dominant bird species of the forest has undoubtedly had an effect one surprising effect of the change is that the colors of the forest have changed Eastern deciduous forests used to turn yellows oranges and russets in the fall because of the increasing percentage of red maple the Fall colors have turned increasingly red the extinction of the passenger pigeon has literally changed the color of the forest and another effect of the extinction of the passenger pigeon was the end of the era when in America we very commonly ate pigeons pigeon was a common staple of the 19th century American diet while in the same era chickens were mostly raised for eggs and chicken dinners were rare that has to do with developments in chicken technology which radically changed chickens and especially their availability year round that occurred largely around the turn of the 20th century pigeons however were a critical part of Frontier survival where spring flocks returning North offered a ready supply of cheap protein as winter was ending people survived in Winter mostly unpreserved food so fresh meat would be a cause for rejoicing French naturalist Benedict Henry revoyle wrote in his 1865 book shooting and fishing in the rivers prairies and Backwoods of North America that when a kit descended on the town of Hartford Kentucky in 1847 the population was underarms men and boys all carried double or single guns and lay hid behind Woods rocks and wherever there was a chance of shot prodigious quantities were killed by these means and that during his three-day stay at the time nothing was eaten but pigeons people on the American frontier often preferred a rustic pigeon pie but rival noted that they were also eaten boiled broiled stewed or baked as important as pigeons were to the frontier a key technology of the era changed the way they affected the American diet railroads allowed pigeons to be shipped in quantity to Eastern markets encouraging commercial hunting and the demand was huge a 1917 report to the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture noted that at one point the New York Market alone would take a hundred barrels a day for weeks without a break in price Chicago St Louis Boston and all the great and little cities of North and Eastern United States joined in the demand the report concluded need we wonder why the pigeons have vanished the day when pigeon was on most everybody's diet is one of the cheapest and most available proteins is almost unrecognizable today today the commercial squab industry produces less birds for consumption in a week than a single chicken company produces every hour and a single bird costs as much as 25 dollars a squab producer noted that an article in Popular Science in 2018. a hundred years ago everyone was eating them now you can't find them unless you're filthy rich meanwhile according to the National chicken Council in 2018 Americans are on Pace to eat 92.5 pounds of chicken per capita on a side note Popular Science suggests we not look towards the cheaper alternative of urban pigeons while they are not as some assume particularly carriers of avian disease their diet of essentially trash means that they likely ingest things like rodentside battery acid and Lead but it was of course the demand that eventually spelled the passenger pigeon's demise and in that two of the great Technologies of the 19th century conspired against them not only did railroads allow barrels of pigeons to be shipped to Eastern cities they allowed Hunters to travel to the flocks having been alerted to their locations along the new Telegraph lines in 1871 the Wisconsin newspaper the Kilbourne City mirror described the commercial pigeon hunting industry at a Wisconsin Roost hardly a train arrives that does not bring hunters or Trappers hotels are full Coopers are busy making barrels and men women and children are active in packing the birds or filling the barrels in 1871 a single seller of ammunition provided three tons of powder and 16 tons of shot to supply Hunters at one Pigeon Roost during a nesting season just one town in New York was estimated to have shipped 1.8 million pigeons to larger cities in the year 1851 alone passenger pigeons were hunted and trapped for food for sport to a limited agricultural pest to their their habitat was chopped up cut down for Timber cleared for Farmland so that the patchwork of wilderness that we have today would be unrecognizable to a mid-19th century American how such a profligate species could be driven to Extinction in such a short period of time as still a a point of scientific study and National debate and it should be but that's the story everybody knows but there is another story as well because in Martha's passing came the passing of a of a different time of of the era when the nation was still new when Nature's Bounty seemed unlimited an era before supermarkets when if you wanted to eat it depended upon what you could grow or catch or kill an era when we looked at the sky and instead of at our cell phones an era when we didn't think that we knew everything even the forest today blush a different color as if they don't quite recognize themselves the passenger pigeon is known in popular culture for good reason but there is another reason to remember them because passenger pigeons show us how very different life was just 150 years ago so different that we might not recognize it today it represents a different more optimistic and naive era that no longer exists but that deserves to be remembered when you think about exciting history the history of ornithology the study of birds doesn't necessarily come first to mind but passion is a wonderful thing and brings an excitement of its own as poet Maya Angelou once said a bird that does not sing because it has an answer it sings because it has a song John J Audubon had such a song this is a story of a man's passion of one of the world's most valuable books and of a magnificent lost bird and it is a story that deserves to be remembered audubon's story started as all great stories do with being captured by Pirates I'm actually not joking John J audubon's father was a sea captain and a privateer and at one point he was actually captured by Pirates and it's not really relevant to the story but I just couldn't leave that part out John J Audubon was born in Haiti and he moved as a child with his family to France eventually he immigrated to the United States where he tried to make a business on some land that his father had bought here he worked his hand at a number of businesses with varying success but his true love was the combination of Art and nature and while other Pursuits and the need to feed his family kept him from pursuing his dream as much as he wished at the age of 35 he decided to undertake an extraordinary project to document by painting every species of bird in America Audubon traveled the American West in the first half of the 19th century hunting birds and paying other Hunters to bring him specimens it was a time when the Backwoods of America were not just dangerous and wild but when the birds were so plentiful that a single flock of the now extinct passenger pigeon could take three days to pass overhead it might have included tens of billions of birds it's a time when the forests were endless and settlers especially European ones were few and far between Autobahn was trained in both art and Taxidermy he developed Innovative methods of using wire and string to mount Taxidermy birds in natural poses and he would Mount his specimens on a grid so that he could accurately represent their proportions he issued oil painting which was the most common type of painting in the day and instead preferred a mix of watercolors charcoals and pastels he engaged talented landscape artists who would paint the Landscapes and the plants that are in many of his pictures and unlike most works of Natural Science in their time he posed the birds in natural poses against Natural settings engaging in natural activities it was not an easy task and it didn't pay particularly well at times to make ends meet he had to take artistic commissions or take work teaching art but his 12-year Opus work is nothing short of astounding first published in 1827 the birds of America identified 25 new species and 12 new subspecies of birds and included Prince of at least six species of birds that are now extinct it is considered one of the finest ornithological Works ever produced the four volume work was reproduced using both copper plated etching and Engraving and each of the prints was then hand colored using watercolors Audubon paid for this expensive printing process by selling subscriptions subscribers would pay as they go for prints that were produced each month among his subscribers Were King Charles the tenth of France Adelaide the queen consort of England and famous American politicians Henry Clay and Daniel Webster it's estimated that there were only about 200 original copies of this extraordinary work and of those only around 120 are known to still exist today and in that work there is an enduring mystery Falco washingtoni or Washington's eagle Audubon named the species which he presumed to be newly discovered after George Washington it was an exceptional bird a uniformly red Brown Sea Eagle over three and a half feet tall with a 10-foot wingspan that was more than 25 percent larger than the other two species of known American Eagles the bald eagle and the golden eagle Audubon noted citing the bird just five times in his extensive travels and claimed to have shot one for Taxidermy which he used to document its astounding dimensions and many characteristics that distinguished it from other known eagle species but the problem is that modern ornithologists don't agree that the bird exists or in fact ever existed there were other ornithologists who claimed to have had sightings and there were a few specimens that people claimed were collected but none of those specimens can be found today they've all been lost sold into private collections without record destroyed by fire in museum records but the sample cannot be found and there has not been one confirmed sighting in the modern era ornithologists generally consider it to be a misidentification either of an exceptionally large golden eagle or of a juvenile bald eagle who at different times in their development have brown rather than white heads but neither of these explanations fit first of all the bird was known to catch fish making it clearly a sea eagle as opposed to the golden eagle which is a true eagle and it lacked the distinctive extended leg feathers that distinguish golden eagles it was described as having uniformly Brown feathers and bald eagles even in those stages where their heads are not white would have modeled colors with some white feathers mixed in and it had distinguished inclusion factors in terms of the color of its beak and the scaling of its legs as well as in behaviors like nesting on the ground on cliffsides instead of up in trees that simply do not fit the other two eagle species and Audubon was not the only one who claimed to have seen them other ornithologists claim to at least have sightings of the bird and of course this is John J Audubon who would have witnessed hundreds of eagles and been quite familiar with the other two species but if it's a real species how did it just disappear well maybe it didn't it was always known to be an extremely rare species and its habitat is not heavily populated as we've seen it can be confused for golden eagles and bald eagles and its sheer size means that when someone did see one that sighting might have been written off as an exaggeration in the end the man who had trouble feeding his family did okay for himself the birds of America earned him enough money that he could buy a 20-acre estate in New York he continued his scientific Endeavors he documented 36 species of birds on a trip to Newfoundland and Labrador in 1833. in 1848 he started showing signs of Alzheimer's disease and he passed away in 1851. his contribution to our understanding of bird anatomy and bird Behavior was far-reaching his book was quoted three times in Charles Darwin's the Origin of Species he won numerous Awards and honors including election to the prestigious Royal Society which would have been the highest honor for a scientist of his day and there are several Parks preserves museums galleries schools and even a 13 226 foot tall mountain peak in Colorado named after John Jay Audubon his seminal work the birds of America has become one of the most valued books in the world of the 120 copies known to exist only about 13 are in private hands one sold at auction in London in 2010 for 11 and a half million dollars according to Economist magazine five of the top 10 highest prices ever paid for a book at auction were copies of the birds of America but don't fret many of the other copies that are institutionally owned are in universities in the United States and Europe where they are frequently put on display and the University of Michigan has put all 425 plates onto their website where you can view them today today audubon's name is nearly synonymous with bird conservation in 1895 a fan of his used his name when he created a society dedicated to bird conservation and today the national Audubon Society which is dedicated to the conservation of birds and their habitats has more than 500 local chapters ornithologists have still not agreed to the existence of Falco washingtoni but there have been a few immature sightings in recent years and there are some scientists that are still making the bird's case I for one truly want to believe I look out my window every day hoping to see Washington's Eagle sitting in a tree I hope that because it's it's such a good story it is a symbol of a man and his passion of a Lost Frontier of a time in history when the flocks of birds were so big that they blocked out the Sun and I want to believe that all good stories are true if you look outside your window on a nice spring day you might assume that robins and sparrows are the most numerous birds in the world but no not even close or could it be say pigeons or seagulls again not even close if you looked it up you might find note of the red build quala weaver bird of sub-Saharan Africa that occurs in astounding numbers and whose population is estimated to exceed a billion and yet still it is not the most numerous bird on earth if you even went back in time to the passenger pigeon the most numerous wild species ever found who at its height had a population estimated to exceed 5 billion it would not even come close to the most numerous bird on Earth today Dallas Dallas domesticus and how the bird that most of us simply know as the chicken came to be the most numerous bird on earth is history that deserves to be remembered the exact story of the domestication of the chicken is not completely clear as domesticated birds have interbred with wild birds the DNA story is smuttled most Scholars agree that the chicken was domesticated from the wild red jungle fowl member of the Pheasant family that still exist in large parts of Southeast Asia today although the species is threatened by hybridization with domestic chickens however genes of a similar gray jungle fowl found on the Indian subcompetent continent have been identified in modern breeds of domesticated chicken as well leading some scientists to suggest that chickens may have been domesticated in multiple domestication events in areas of South Asia and China the domestication might have occurred as far back as eight to ten thousand years ago and from Asia domesticated chickens spread to the Middle East Africa where chickens had an advantage over local guinea fowl who had the tendency to fly away Europe and Oceania while chickens were only thought to have come to the Americas after contact with Europe there is some evidence that there were chickens in South America in the pre-columbian era supporting distill some controversial theory that there was contact in the Americas with Polynesian peoples surprisingly most scientists agree that the original domestication of chickens was done for the purpose of [ __ ] fighting not for eggs or meat male chickens called [ __ ] have a natural aggression towards one another and have a sharp spur on their heel that they use to attack chickens bred for the purpose of fighting are called Gamecocks and are selected for strength and stamina cockfights are sometimes used as a form of ritual sacrifice and fighting [ __ ] represent virility the sport which often included wage ring alongside religious and cultural elements spread from the Indus Valley to Greece and Rome and is depicted in ancient mosaics the fighting chickens would be placed in a shallow depression that would serve as their ring where they would fight and that was called a cockpit as the controls of a ship where the pilot might steer the ship were often placed in an open well on the deck it resembled the cockpit and so came to be known as the cockpit and then that term which refers to where the controls of the vessel are was eventually carried over to aircraft where the spot that controlled the aircraft was called a cockpit and also to race cars although now banned in many parts of the world the sport continues both legally and illegally throughout the world it might be the world's oldest continuously played sport despite this use the utility of domesticated chickens is a food source is obvious they produce food both in the form of eggs and meat they require relatively few resources to maintain foraging readily on insects and food scraps they are poor flyers and relatively easily confined in protected cages at night they are easily portable on boats and ships and relative to larger domesticated animals they provide a single meal rather than leaving the problem of safely storing the excess food when say slaughtering a cow or a goat eggs are also easier to preserve and transport than milk relative to Wild Birds domesticated chickens are less aggressive grow larger and produce larger eggs earlier and more frequently if chickens were domesticated for the purpose of [ __ ] fighting it is clear that the domesticated breeds were developed as a source of food chickens came somewhat late to Egypt given its long history but Egypt produced a new technology in chicken cultivation that awed the ancient world egg incubators so significant that they were mentioned by Aristotle who incorrectly supposed that the incubation was done by burying the eggs in dung the Egyptians were reportedly protective of the secrets of their incubation ovens which allowed chickens to be produced faster and more reliably if hens are used to incubate eggs using the natural process the hen will stop laying for a period but if the eggs are instead removed and artificially incubated the hen will produce more eggs incubators also allow chickens to be incubated year round whereas chickens in colder climates could not generally keep eggs warm enough to produce chicks in the winter months despite Europeans knowing of the Egyptian incubators in the time of the ancient Greeks the operation of the ovens which set the eggs in baskets in a chamber below a higher chamber where a smoldering fire was maintained was not clearly understood and described by Europeans until French science scientists Renee Antoine pershall de remuer gained access to the ovens and described their methods in 1750. the process required skilled handlers who maintained the fires and turned the eggs wood is relatively rare in Egypt so the smoldering fires kept in dome-shaped Chambers allowed smoke to escape while keeping rain out usually used the more common Egyptian fuel of dried dung which was likely the Genesis of Aristotle's misconception about the eggs being buried in dong Fishel produced his own design for an egg incubator but the colder European climates favored required more robust Fuel and a practical modern egg incubator was not invented until coal lamp incubators were perfected in the 1800s chickens and eggs were popular in ancient Rome where the omelet was invented at one point the fattening of chickens was prohibited in Rome and the eating of chicken limited to one per meal in order to preserve supplies of wheat the response was to invent the Capon a castrated rooster which can grow up to twice its normal size chicken was one of the more common proteins in medieval Europe where larger animals could be prohibitively expensive while chickens were relatively inexpensive to acquire and keep but archaeologists noted a significant increase in chicken bones in the archaeological record starting about 900 to 1000 A.D historians have proposed a number of reasons for the sudden increase in chicken consumption in the high medieval period including increasing urbanization and standards of living but the largest driving Factor may have been religious practice Benedictine monks of the period started enforcing rules around religious fasting that included a prescription against the meat of four-legged animals but which allowed the meat of birds and eggs as there were at the time around 130 fasting days a year in common Christian practice chicken and eggs quickly grew in popularity as favored proteins in fact in Oxford University study in 2017 of chicken bones from the high medieval period found that their DNA was rapidly altering During the period as people were selecting for larger less aggressive species that produce more and larger eggs and thus Christian feasting practices in Europe literally changed the very genetic structure of domesticated chickens and if it seems strange that religion affected chickens understand that the symbolic importance of chickens was not at all new as previously mentioned cockfighting had both religious and cultural elements but the symbolism of chickens goes much farther than that eggs were a symbol of fertility in the coming of spring and Pagan rituals long before the tradition of hiding Easter eggs was described by Christians as being symbolic of Jesus's emergence from the tomb and Resurrection the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism saw the crowing rooster is symbolic of a turning point in the cosmic struggle between dark and Light on the Chinese zodiac people born in the year of the rooster are supposed to be perfectionists who are critical egotistical but also practical loyal and organized in Norse mythology three Roasters crying signaled the coming of Ragnarok the end of times and multiple religions use roosters in divination a practice called electromancy in the Japanese Shinto religion The Roosters associated with the goddess amritarasu goddess of the Sun and universe Islam considers the rooster one of the three voices that are beloved by Allah saying when you hear the crowing of [ __ ] ask for Allah's blessing for they have seen an angel the gospels of the Christian New Testament tell the story of Jesus's of Jesus telling Peter that before the rooster crows you will deny me three times thus the rooster can be seen as nefarious but as the rooster crowing LED Peter to repent it is also seen as a symbol of Grace and forgiveness the rooster is therefore the symbol of Saint Peter and in the 9th century pope Nicholas the first decreed that a rooster should be placed atop all churches as a reminder of Peter's denial of Christ not only does the rooster still Adorn the top of many European churches but Nicholas's decree started the tradition of placing Roosters on weather veins chickens and their behavior become intimately connected to culture and have permeated language to call someone a chicken is to call them a coward a term that may day back to the 14th century versions of the story about the chicken named Chicken Little or Henny Penny referring to a character who mistakenly believes a disaster is imminent go back as much as 25 centuries chicken feed is an idiom going back to the 19th century that means a paltry psalm a politician promising Prosperity May promise a chicken in every pot a phrase that while used in the 1928 U.S presidential campaign actually dates back at least to English King Henry IV if a person's bad Deeds come back to them it is said that their chickens have come home to roost and if the flavor of unusual food is difficult to describe it is said to taste like chicken if something is crooked it is cockeyed if a man cannot defend himself from a sharp tugged wife he is said to be impact a reference to the fact that chickens themselves will establish an order within their community that is called a pecking order itself a term that is applied to any recognition of status within a group a particularly attentive mother or matronly figure is called a mother hen and if that woman is depressed that her children have grown she is said to have empty nest syndrome a leader who bullies people is called the [ __ ] of the Walk referring to a fighting chicken whose pen was called a walk if you are barely making enough money to make ends meet you are like a chicken scratching out a living and if you're able to set some aside then that is your nest egg and if you can set quite a lot aside then you are Feathering your nest if you place too much faith in what investment you are putting all your eggs in one basket and if you're planning how to spend your investment before it produces returns you are counting your eggs before they are hatched if something is particularly difficult to find it is as scarce as hen's teeth and if it gets away it has flown The Coop and for letting it go you might be called a bird brain if a person is particularly harassable they may be called hard-boiled and if they are disorganized they are running around like a chicken with its head cut off if they back out on a promise they are said to chicken out and a person who does that might be by some called a bad egg and if they've seen better days they might say that they are no spring chicken when putting a plan into motion you're hatching an idea and if the plan succeeds you have something to Crow about but if that plan fails you might wind up with egg on your face if something makes you particularly angry and you can't let it go it is stuck in your craw if a story cannot be believed is a [ __ ] and Bull story if you're in need of a joke try asking why did the chicken cross the road and if you want to befuddle someone ask them which came first the chicken or the egg as food chicken is among the most ubiquitous Foods in the world part of almost any cuisine that includes meat worldwide some 55 million chickens are eaten every day but that was not always the case in 19th century American chickens were mostly used for eggs making chicken is a meat rare used for special occasions and favored by the rich discovery of a way to synthesize vitamin D in the 1920s improved chicken production as it allowed chickens to thrive during winter and improvements in breeding increased production through the 1930s eventually large-scale production vastly increased the amount of chicken available during the second world war meat and cheese were rationed in the United States who was not only providing for its vastly expanded military but helping to serve the needs of allies in liberated countries devastated by War however poultry eggs and fresh milk were not rationed and consumption of poultry skyrocketed in America in the 1990s chicken surpassed beef as the most popular meat in Europe largely did fears of bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease and in the United States this drought had reduced beef stock and driven up prices versus poultry in 2015 Americans ate an average of 92 pounds of chicken per person a year a record and the countries produced about 90 billion eggs the worldwide trend is nothing short of extraordinary Eric Dorfman director of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh did some math based on statistics from the food and agriculture organization of the United Nations and determined that in 2016 some 66 billion chickens were produced in the world nearly nine for every human on earth just as shocking however is that just 55 years earlier in 1961 that number was just 7.4 billion chickens or about one chicken for every 400 people on earth and while chicken and poultry production faces certain obstacles including questions of food safety and treatment of the animals especially in the industrialized setting chicken is going to continue to be a larger and larger part of the human food supply chicken is a relatively healthy form of protein with relatively lower amounts of saturated fat than Alternatives and including important nutrients like the antioxidant selenium chicken is also relatively efficient to produce it takes about two pounds of feed to produce a pound of chicken whereas it takes about seven pounds of feed to produce a pound of beef and three pounds of feed to produce a pound of pork and chicken and eggs also release relatively low amounts of CO2 per gram of protein and if chicken is going to continue to be a big part of Humanity's future it is a surprising part of the world's past in 2007 scientists were able to determine the chemical composition of proteins that were found inside a 68 million year old Tyrannosaurus Rex bone and what they found was and I quote remarkably similar to chickens suggesting that chickens are the animal on this earth that is most similar to the Tyrannosaurus Rex and of course suggesting that Tyrannosaurus Rex tasted like chicken there have been some very odd wars fought in human history for odd reasons and one of the strangest of those Wars demonstrates the fact that sometimes things done with the best of intentions can have horrible results that time when China went to war with sparrows deserves to be remembered in 1958 the newspaper the Peking people's daily proclaimed a declaration of war from the nation's leader Mao Zedong no Warrior shall be withdrawn until the battle is won all must join battle ardently and courageously we must persevere with the doggedness of revolutionaries this was not a small conflict that was being declared not a border engagement this enemy required the attention of all of China's estimated 630 million population this was a battle to the debt that required not just the military but one in which even school children would be expected to take up arms every citizen would be expected to kill the enemy and those kills would be counted to ensure that each and every Warrior was doing his patriotic Duty in China in 1958 to lag behind in a conflict declared by the government could mean severe punishment China moved as Juan and descent was not allowed Across the Nation the radio played an Anthem arise arise oh Millions with one heart braving the enemy's fire march on so what was this mortal enemy that had to be pursued with such dogged determination Pastor montanus better known as the Eurasian tree Sparrow the sparrow distinguished by a chestnut colored crown and nape a black Bib and one black patch on an otherwise Pure White cheek is widespread throughout temperate areas of Eurasia and Southeast Asia tree sparrows are about 12 and a half to 14 centimeters or five and a half inches long through much of Europe a similar species passer domesticus otherwise known as the house sparrow is more associated with human habitation whereas the tree sparrows tend to live in the woods house sparrows are larger than tree sparrows and more aggressive tending to drive tree sparrows out of nesting places but in Asia the tree Sparrow lives commonly in towns and cities tree sparrows eat grains and seeds but also eat invertebrates insects spiders centipedes and millipedes so why would China go to war with sparrows an estimated 14 million people died in China during the second world war China was in fact at war with Japan before the German invasion of Poland which usually considered the start of the second World War during part of that war China was really fighting two Wars as the Chinese Civil War was being fought between 1927 and 1937 at the same time that China was fighting Japan although the nationalists and the Red Army made common cause against Japan between 1937 and 1945 clashes between their forces continued the conflict exploded into open Warfare again in 1946 killing an estimated 6 million more when Chairman Mao declared the creation of the People's Republic of China in 1949 the country had been at constant Warfare for 22 years and there were years more of insurgencies development had stagnated and the population was largely poor Public Health was in a dismal state with infant mortality as high as 300 per thousand live births disease was rampant with tuberculosis plague cholera polio malaria smallpox and hookworm endemic throughout much of the country and recurrent cholera epidemics that in some years killed tens of thousands thus when in 1958 Chairman Mao and the Communist Party of China initiated a plan called the Great Leap Forward intended to rapidly transform China from an agrarian society to an industrial society a Great Patriotic Health campaign was included among the many reforms of the period the campaign was called the four pests campaign and targeted rats flies mosquitoes and sparrows the program amounted to a carte blanche issued to the people to fulfill their duty to the nation through the massacre of the small bothersome animals and insects so why were sparrows on the list with rats and mosquitoes Chinese scientists had calculated that each Sparrow consumed four and a half kilogram of grain each year and that for every Millions barrels killed there would be food for sixty thousand people part of the goal of the Great Leap Forward was to increase agricultural production via the use of communal Farms The Sparrows were seen as a threat to production at a time when the government was promising a multi-fold increase in food production and environmentalists may be concerned with such a radical attack on the ecosystem but Mao was convinced journalist King argues that Mao knew nothing about animals he didn't want to discuss his plan or listen to experts he just decided that the four pests should be killed during the era scientists who challenged the government were often denounced or repressed and the result was that a revolution based on science was often driven by bad science one historian described the philosophy of science During the period as one of better red than expert as political ideology was valued above scientific principles the traditional Chinese religions of Confucianism and taoism tended to stress living in harmony with nature sparrows were a common theme in traditional Chinese art but Mouse on nature is being subservient to man in May 1958 he said in a speech to the party Congress make the high mountain bow its head make the river yield its way Mao used a common phrase rending Shin chin meaning man must conquer nature as the model of the program for example Mao was a great supporter of the ideas of a Russian biologist named trophin lucinco the Cinco theorized that under the proper conditions nature can provide virtually Limitless resources the philosophy was particularly appealing to a nation looking to create super productive agricultural communes the problem was that lysenko was almost completely wrong about science something that could happen more readily in a nation where scientific descent was repressed in the name of ideology among his dangerously flawed biological ideas lysenko theorized that seeds should be planted very close together under the idea that a species would never cannibalize itself in that he was simply wrong seeds planted so close together do compete resulting in stunted plants and reduced yield China was able to apply a huge amount of effort in unity of purpose built over the course of a decade the red flag Canal runs along a Mountain Cliff and threw 44 tunnels across the taihang mountains diverting water from the Zhang River to valleys in Northern Hanan province astoundingly the 71 kilometer or 44-mile Canal was built using hand tools and yet the construction of the canal saw more Earth moved in a single week in 1959 than the total move to create the entire Panama Canal the same type of effort was put into the war against sparrows Mao directed here is the method we make our resolution we coordinate our actions we divide our tasks we cut off the food supply we set up a trap and we continue our Battle of Destruction the public health campaign was implemented by everyone from troops of children to the elderly the population took to banging pots and pans or beating drums to scare the birds from Landing forcing them to fly until they fell from the sky in exhaustion Sparrow nests were torn down eggs were broken and nestlings were killed sparrows and other birds were shot from the sky one witness from the time explained it was fun to wipe out the four pests the whole school went to kill sparrows we made ladders to knock down their nests and beat gongs in the evenings when they were coming home to roost the campaign was made into an ideological battle with the government declaring that birds are public animals of capitalism contests were held among Enterprises government agencies and schools over those who handed in the largest number of dead sparrows a Polish Diplomat from the time recalled that when the polish Embassy in Beijing denied the Chinese request to enter the embassy premises to scare away The Sparrows there the Chinese merely surrounded the embassy with people beating drums after two days of constant drumming the polls had to use shovels to clear the embassy of dead sparrows a newspaper in Shanghai gave a description of the campaign the city-wide battle to destroy the sparrows began in large and small streets red flags were waving on the buildings and in the courtyards Open Spaces roads and Rural Farm Fields there were numerous scarecrows sentries elementary and middle school students government office employees Factory workers farmers and people's Liberation Army shouting their war cries in the city in the outskirts almost half of the labor force was mobilized into the anti-sparrow army usually the young people responsible for trapping poisoning and attacking The Sparrows while the old people and the children kept Sentry watch the factories in the city committed themselves into the war effort even as they guarantee that they would maintain production levels in the Parks cemeteries and hot houses where there were fewer people around 150 free fire zones were set up for shooting The Sparrows the nunying girls middle school Rifle Team received training in the techniques for shooting birds thus the citizens fought a total war against The Sparrows by 8 pm tonight it is estimated that a total of 194 432 sparrows have been killed China has never reported exactly how many sparrows were killed in the campaign but the estimates are that at least many millions were killed and that the species nearly disappeared in China before in 1960 the flaw in the idea became apparent researchers at China's Academy of Sciences performed autopsy on symbol of the Dead sparrows and determined that the birds ate large numbers of insects largely agricultural pests simply put the bugs The Sparrows ate would have done far more damage to crops Than The Sparrows killing sparrows was in fact causing a greater loss in crops Locust population soared devastating harvests in 1960 the party replaced sparrows with bed bugs in the four pests campaign it is amazing given its almost unimaginable scope how little the rest of the world knows about what in China is referred to as the three years of great Chinese famine between 1959 and 1961. Chinese government figures say that some 15 million people died of starvation and related diseases during these three years and if that's true that means that more people died in China due to the famine than died in China due to the second world war but most estimates assume that those government figures are Far From Reality independent estimates assume that between 30 and 45 million people actually died in the great Chinese famine one of the worst famines in world history and of course the famine wasn't just caused by the sparrow campaign there were numerous policy failures for example lesenko's close planting Theory simply didn't work and ended up causing many fields to be lost entirely to rot government officials were afraid that they would be punished if they didn't meet their production quotas and so they falsified their numbers which caused an illusion of abundance that kept government from acting even as the people of China were starving the government of China was selling Grain on the World Market in order to get money to pay debts and shifting fields from food to cash crops this is of course not the only time in history that politics and economics came together to cause an environmental disaster to the detriment of the government's citizens but the the poorly conceived and yet incredibly effective campaigned against sparrows in China which then caused a plague of locusts is a great example of policy failure on the grandest level as went The Sparrows so went the people by the end of the 19th century industrialization and growth had taken a heavy toll on nature the startling extinction of the passenger pigeon proved that even a very prolific species could be brought to Extinction it was that concern that drove future president Theodore Roosevelt to introduce conservation legislation and to start a Conservation Club but he wasn't the only person at the end of the 19th century in America who was seeking to preserve the natural beauty to which Americans had become accustomed one possibly unlikely candidate as a conservationist was Edward Avery mcelhinney who was an adventurer he was a naturalist and an orthologist but he was also a magnet of Industry the son of the inventor and heir to the company that produced foreign Tabasco sauce and he nearly single-handedly saved a magnificent species from Extinction it is history that deserves to be remembered Edward Avery mcelhinney for his whole life known as Ned was born March 29 1872 the son of Edmund mcelhenney and Mary Eliza Avery Edmund made his money as a banker in Louisiana Mary's family had run a sugar Plantation the Civil War ruined Edmonds banking fortune in Mary's family home called Avery Island was burned by Union Soldiers because is not an island really at all but actually a salt Dome that raises 160 feet above the swampland the averies in Edmond had flooded Texas during the war where Edmond supported the war effort from civilian positions while the island became an important salt mine for the Confederacy supplying 22 million pounds of salt during the war Edmund lived with his in-laws on the island after the war attending the Family Garden though it's a matter of some debate at some point he began growing Tabasco Peppers named for the Mexican state from which they came possibly with the assistance of a plantation owner who seemed to have been growing them since the 1840s in 1868 he grew his first crop and began selling Tabasco brand pepper sauce by his death in 1890 the sauce was selling all over the country Ned mcelhinney enjoyed the outdoors as a child he enjoyed exploring the island in the native Wildlife he attended several military schools as a teen and eventually attended Lehigh University but he left before he could graduate to pursue a very special dream he sought the life of an adventurer in 1894 he likely paid to join the crew of the Miranda an unfortunate ship that had been secured by Explorer Frederick Cook had been the surgeon on an earlier expedition to the Arctic under Lieutenant Robert Perry Perry and cook would have competing claims for the first expedition to reach the North Pole in the first decade of the next century Cook's expedition in 1894 though was billed as a tourist cruise to Greenland and Ned joined as the expedition's official ornithologist the shift departed from New York on July 7th the Miranda had a long history of accidents and already sunk once in New York's East River the ship hit ice on July 17th in the fog off the coast of Newfoundland and had to be put in for repairs set off again on July 29th they arrived in Greenland a few days later and Ned was able to collect some specimens of black back goals two days later the ship struck a reef and the captain determined that the Miranda was crippled it sank entirely while being towed three weeks later and likely all of Ned's specimens went down with the ship from there he returned home to Louisiana where his elder brother John had taken over the topasco sauce company and renamed it the mcelhinney's son Corporation when he returned he noticed that there had been a dramatic decrease in the Egret population the hunting of egrets had grown from the middle of the 19th century largely to satisfied the demand for plumes as decorations for hats by 1885 plumes of birds like egrets spoonbills and flamingos were selling for as much as twenty dollars an ounce by 1899 five million birds were being killed a year including 95 percent of Florida's Shorebirds the demand was especially high for nuptial plumes of snowy egrets which they developed during breeding season demand was so great that Hunters would often wait to shoot the birds as they came home to their nests conservation was a growing movement at the time but it would be another 15 years before there was legislation to protect plume birds from hunting and the snowy egret population had been devastated some estimates were that there were less than 250 remaining in the wild Ned searched the nearby Coast for surviving egrets and brought at least eight chicks back to every island to raise he built what he called a flying cage an Aviary made mostly of netting that enclosed a pond he had made by Deming up a creek less than 200 yards from his home in the fall he released the birds to fly south for the winter and anxiously waited to see if they would return they did and the population of egrets on his protected Refuge quickly grew every bush is loaded with snowy egret and Louisiana Heron nests one visitors had by 1911 an estimated a hundred thousand snowy egrets nested in what he dubbed Bird City of course the island naturally attracted many other kinds of birds including spoonbills herons bitterns and Ducks he continued to improve the space adding nesting places brush supported by cane frames and a stand that he kept stock with twigs for nests Theodore Roosevelt called it the most noteworthy Reserve in the country after establishing the sanctuary nitsat to lead his own expedition to the Arctic he came to an agreement with Dr William pepper president of the Museum of anthropology and Archeology at the University of Pennsylvania to help finance a trip to Point Barrow Alaska the northernmost point of the United States he succeeded by promising the museum all the specimens he collected beginning in 1897 Ned into assistance gathered specimens at the remote Outpost renting an abandoned building once used as a way station by Whalers one Observer called what they collected the finest quality that had been obtained they collected 855 mammal specimens mostly Lemmings but also three new species they also collected 69 species of birds in 1048 specimens as well as a handful of insects in the form of bird parasites while there he played a role in the point Barrel Overland relief expedition in the winter of 1897-98 eight whaling ships were caught in the ice near Point Barrow and some 265 crew were stranded the United States Revenue cutter service put together an expedition that struggled 1500 miles over land to rescue the sailors Ned agreed to let some of the stranded officers stay in his rented building and help to keep the men fed and warm until the government team arrived to rescue them a contemporary news report quoted Ned who said that the government had brought 400 reindeer for food but they were not needed as we have killed over a thousand Caribou by hunting Ned returned to Avery Island in 1898 in time for his elder brother John to join the army and eventually the Rough Riders under theater Roosevelt even claimed to have saved the future president from a sniper John left the Tabasco company to Ned who would run the company until his death in 1949. he renamed it the mcelhenney company and would go on to modernize the production and standardize the recipe in 1927 he replaced the cork with today's Twist Off cap while he continued to Market and grow the Tabasco company he also spearheaded numerous conservation projects he began with the burglar Journal called the Great mcelhinney project where he bought or induced others to buy land to put aside as a refuge for birds and other animals in 1911 he donated 70 000 acres to the state as a refuge and in the next few years induced others to buy more ultimately securing over two hundred thousand acres as Refuge which remained protected today he thought his work should be considered only the beginning of a project setting aside Land north and south across the country to protect bird populations and migratory routes in 1912 again banding Birds attaching small aluminum bands to the legs and birds for research purposes but found he wasn't getting much data when he began using bands acquired from the American bird banding Association he was much more successful over 22 years he banded over 189 thousand Birds providing important scientific data in the 1920s he worked on transforming his 170 acre estate into what is now called jungle Gardens jungle Gardens is filled with animals as well as a large collection of non-native plants as well as ones native to Louisiana in his collection are azaleas irises Japanese Camellias and bamboo he became a very successful grower of bamboo and an advocate for its growth and use in the United States botanist David Fairchild wrote to Ned that you have been the great Pioneer bamboo planter of America and posterity will give you the honor that is your due for the great work you have done in 1935 he opened the jungle Gardens to the public or was still maintained to this day as a tourist attraction in its giant Garden is a 900 year old statue of Buddha that was gifted to him by a pair of friends who apparently found it in storage in New York that contributed numerous papers to Scientific magazines about birds such as the snowy egret sandhill crane and the boat tail grackle but wrote about other things as well in 1935 he wrote the alligators life history which he had been studying since he was a child more than 40 years later zoologist Archie Carr called it the best existing account of the natural history of one of the world's most versatile reptiles Ned claimed to have come across a 19 foot two inch alligator whose length he measured using his rifle there's no corroborating evidence but if it is true it would be the largest gator ever recorded they had also collected an enormous number of books about birds and Illustrated that now make up the EA mcelhinney collection of Natural History at Louisiana State University it's been described as an incredibly rare and beautiful collection he also collected from former slaves who lived on Avery Island over a hundred spirituals worship songs sung and written in slave communities and preserved them with their musical Melodies despite his conservation credentials he also put a part in What has become an ecological disaster in Louisiana and other Southern States nutria also known as koipu are a capybara like rodent now invasive in wetlands in the south they were not first introduced by him but he did breed them for fur when they proved difficult to control and impossible to contain he like others who formed them released them into the wild this was encouraged at the time because it was thought the rats could create a fur industry in the state instead the nutria proven to devastate local ecology by destructively burrowing and eating plants that help prevent erosion it is an ironic Legacy for a man so otherwise dedicated to conservation Ned mcelhenney was many things in his life some 200 million dollars worth of Tabasco sauce is still sold each year and bird City and jungle Gardens remain as monuments to his efforts as do the thousands of snowy egrets that still Nest there today well his work was largely amateur in nature it led him to become an honorary lifetime associate member of the American ornithological Union and many other conservation groups and hundreds of specimens above plants and animals that he collected are in museums throughout the country Ned mcelhinney simply believed that humans have a responsibility to protect what they can of nature in the face of development we often think that one person's efforts cannot affect enormous change but Ned mcelhinney is proof that you can make great changes you only need to look at the snowy egret as proof I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy schwarzen a forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that Thumbs Up Button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section I will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on Facebook Instagram Twitter and check out our merchandise on teespring.com and if you'd like more episodes on forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 29,081

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy

Id: dbCMk_OPasc

Length: 60min 46sec (3646 seconds)

Published: Fri May 26 2023