Academic literature on the topic 'Song sparrow Song sparrow Bird populations'

My old college housemate Claude had dropped by for one of his stimulating visits, an infrequent happening even though his apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side was only an hour away by car. In college, we had been utter opposites in interests and temperaments—Claude’s direction was art criticism, which he celebrated with an élan that gained him a wide circle of friends. Mine was biology, and shyness was my distinguishing social feature. A shared liking for history and the attraction of very different personalities formed a narrow bridge between us, enough to have kept us in occasional contact over the years. We had been discussing European politics and the question of de-centralism over a light lunch on the patio, and then, in one of those curious shifts that conversations take, we had abruptly changed the subject. He was holding forth in his usual compelling fashion. “The trouble with nature writing,” Claude said, “is that it’s so artistically accepting, so uncritical. Lopez, Abbey, and their ilk—why civilization seems to have passed them by without leaving a mark. Culture implies the ability to discriminate, to judge—not sometimes, all of the time. Why should nature be exempt from criticism?” He readjusted his long, elegantly trousered legs carefully on the lounge chair, glared briefly across the patio at a song sparrow sitting on a dead branch of my Cortland apple tree, and continued. “I fail to comprehend why you nature-lovers don’t hold nature to the same kind of ex-acting standard that a cultured person applies to a bottle of Margaux or a performance of Rosenkavalier. Undiscriminating adulation is barbaric.”Just then a starling arrived at the bird feeder, displacing a blue jay. “Do you see that?” cried Claude. “That is exactly what I mean.” “Too aggressive?” “No, no, that’s not it at all. Look at the preposterous thing. Surely you can see what I’m referring to?” “All I see is a starling. It seems healthy.” “It seems healthy!” Claude stared at me in disbelief. “You’re not understanding me. Try to look at it as if it were a painting, a painting you did in beginner’s art class.