A kindergarten ornithologist grows up

I was a month shy of my sixth birthday.  He was a few month’s shy of a disgraceful resignation.  One evening, as a ruse to stay up past bedtime, I decided to write a letter to President Nixon.  My father didn’t miss a beat when I walked into the living room and announced my intention. He promptly got out pad and pencil and solemnly took my dictation. It was March 15, 1974, and this is what I said:

Dear Mr. Nixon,

How are things going in the White House? I hope everything’s going fine. Do you know anything more about Watergate, because I haven’t heard it? If Mr. Kissinger finally gets peace in some of the places, I hope there is peace everywhere. I’m wondering how you think the gas situation is. I hope it is fine.  And I hope no more cars are going 70 when we get more gas from Syria and places that have it. And I hope no more cars are polluting also.

When we were driving 50 mph I was able to see hawks.  It was really pretty when we were going 50 or 55 mph. I saw four sparrow hawks, one red-shouldered hawk and 17 red-tails on the way to Syracuse and on the way back too.

Love, TIM ABBOTT  

P.S. (5 yrs. old)

My dad added the postscript, but the rest is a true and accurate transcript; he made a copy at work the following day, so in addition to the original at the Nixon Library, a duplicate resides in my archives.  

My parents kept straight faces throughout this episode, but given the sheer volume of current events I had managed to absorb through my kindergartner’s ears, they doubtless experienced an “out of the mouths of babes†moment.

Aside from being the source of my irrational soft spot for Tricky Dick — his correspondence staff sent me a nice form letter with his signature and some other White House loot in response — this letter is also evidence of my early environmental awareness.

If I took that same drive to Syracuse today, would I be so fortunate in my roadside ornithology? Kestrals are in general decline, so I would consider myself lucky to see four sparrow hawks. The red-tails are very much with us, though no one drives 55 mph on the New York Thruway anymore so perhaps I would see fewer of them while speeding along.

I might see other birds today that were nowhere in evidence in this area in the early 1970s. I can remember seeing my first flock of wild turkeys in the late 1980s in eastern New York. Now there are tens of thousands in Massachusetts alone. The solitary turkey vultures I remember seeing riding the thermals when I was young have been joined by flocks of their southern kin: the black vultures that every North Canaan resident sees in the dozens, circling above their roosts in the tall pines near the elementary school.

Our birdfeeders have a number of common species that have also expanded their ranges northward in the last 50 years.  Cardinals and titmice were rare north of the mid-Atlantic states when my parents were growing up in the 1950s. Others, like the eastern bluebird, have made a strong recovery after losing habitat and nesting space in the postwar building boom.

If my children were to write to President Obama today — and I would not put it past either of them — they might tell him of the bald eagles that are winging over the Housatonic as the water opens up ahead of spring, or the owls we hear in the pines.  

Tim Abbott is program director of Housatonic Valley Association’s Litchfield Hills Greenprint. His blog is at greensleeves.typepad.com.