Shame on NPR

Okay, I try to keep my posts upbeat, but sometimes I just can't hold in my sorrow.

Right now I'm sitting in front of my computer (duh-oh!) with the window open. Somewhere nearby a bird is singing its heart out. I don't know what kind of bird it is -- maybe a warbler of some kind -- but it sounds like paradise to me. And my heart is breaking. 

The bird is no longer singing. It may have flown away. I just feel extremely lucky that the air isn't totally silent here. But we all hear stories about massive bird deaths caused by electronic towers. For example, this one from NPR:

Baudette Minnesota sits on the US-Canadian border, about as far north in the continental U.S. as you can get, and is famous for snowy winters and a giant concrete walleye that sits downtown. It's also home to a massive Coast Guard tower, built to guide people across and around the Great Lakes. The tower has long been decommissioned, but it remains an imposing presence — especially for the birds who pass through the area on the way to their northern breeding grounds. 

The story isn't complete as written on the link. The real story is about how nearly a thousand birds of many different species fell dead as they struck the tower there in a fog. That's bad enough, but the whole story seemed to exist only to promote a group of women who sing. I think this promotional story at the expense of losing so much wildlife is a disgrace.

Not only am I sitting here whining about the death of nearly a thousand migratory birds, but I own a cell phone and ride in cars and do a million other human things. Every year I see fewer and fewer pollinating insects. Every year I hear fewer birds. I never hear frogs or crickets any more. I wonder how much longer it will be until the first absolutely Silent Spring.

I heard someone say on the radio that humanity has just now begun to wake up. I wonder.