On a cool May morning by Lower Mill Pond in Easthampton, avian wildlife is thriving. Or so it seems.
A pair of newcomers, mute swans, glide with balletic grace upon the surface, their brilliant white plumage stark against the tea-colored water. Disturbed, a great blue heron takes wing from its perch and skims across the pond. Along the shore, ducks and geese huddle and murmur. A double-crested cormorant stands watch upon a fallen, half-submerged tree.
Even amid decay, there is life. There is song, too. The air resounds with a chorus of competing and converging voices: red-winged blackbirds and blue jays, robins and cardinals, sparrows and grackles, and more. They are all here by this pond, cavorting in the brush, offering their music.
A bittersweet melody of hopes and desires, tinged with caution and alarm. They are here, but for how long? Climate change, habitat loss, pollution, and other environmental stressors — the product of unrelenting human industrial activity — have already taken a significant toll on avian life, on all earthly life.
At the current rate of extinction and biodiversity loss, this bucolic and vibrant scene on Lower Mill Pond may soon cease to exist. Unless we take decisive and collective action, our children and grandchildren will inherit a ravaged and depleted world, devoid of any such riches, emptied and silent. What a terrible shame.
David Jaffe
Easthampton