Birds Make Us Happy

 Birds Make Us Happy… by Nina Munteanu

photo by Nina Munteanu

 

When I go out on my daily walk in the nearby meadow, woodland and marsh, I find myself listening to the birds. Their songs and calls weave a symphonic tapestry that stitches me into the very fabric of the place. Through them I find my way “home.” The iconic trill of the red-winged blackbird in the wetland calls me back to my masters studies at university when I did my field work in the marshes and fields near Lennoxville, Quebec. At my back door, the spring serenade of the robin —cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up—calls me back to the comfort of childhood. There’s the playful chickadee-deh-deh-deh giggle of the chickadee, the sweet whistles of the yellow warbler. And then there is the echoing fluting notes of the hermit thrush; that outpouring of heaven’s light from such a tiny creature sends my own heart soaring and fills me with joy. 

A robin fledgling (All bird photos by Merridy Cox)

 

All these make me joyful. All are heaven’s gift.

And I think of Robert Browning’s enduring quote: God’s in His heaven; all’s right with the world.

A recent study has correlated our happiness levels to bird diversity: the higher the number of birds, the greater our joy. This is no surprise to me.

 

by Nina Munteanu

The study by scientists at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research was published recently in Ecological Economics, reports Carly Nairn of Eco Watch. “The scientists concluded that conservation is just as important for human well-being as financial security,” writes Nairn. The study surveyed more than 26,000 adults from twenty-six European countries. From the study, the authors calculated that being around fourteen additional bird species provided as much satisfaction as earning an additional $150 a month. “A high biological diversity in our immediate vicinity is as important for life satisfaction as our income,” reports Senckenberg Biodiversität und Klima Forschungszentrum. “Biological diversity evokes happiness: more bird species in their vicinity increase life satisfaction of Europeans as much as higher income.”

 

A bluejay

According to these and other researchers, birds are the best indicators of biological diversity and more bird species live in natural ecosystems such as green spaces, forested areas and bodies of water. Birds “are among the most visible elements of the animate nature – particularly in urban areas,” reports Senckenberg. “Their song can often be heard even if the bird itself is not visible, and most birds are popular and people like to watch them.”

"The happiest Europeans are those who can experience numerous different bird species in their daily life, or who live in near-natural surroundings that are home to many species," argued lead author Joel Methorst, a doctoral researcher at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center, the iDiv and the Goethe University in Frankfurt.

 

A mourning dove

The research findings also clearly demonstrate that bird diversity is predicated on a healthy natural ecosystem; these two are bound to each other.

Plowing of fields, deforestation, wetland draining, climate change and other land use clearing and treatments have caused great habitat loss. In addition, neonicotinoid pesticides make it harder for birds to put on weight needed for migration, delaying their travel. Our common birds make up a large part of the diversity of birds we encounter. For me just north of Toronto, this means the robin, the cardinal, sparrow, wren, blackbird, starling, junco, blue jay, chickadee, mourning dove, warbler, goldfinch, vireo, crow, osprey, hawk, and so on. 

 

A grackle

These same common bird species are vital to our ecosystems. They control pests, pollinate flowers, spread seeds and help regenerate forests. When these birds disappear, their former habitats lose their functionality. “Declines in your common sparrow or other little brown bird may not receive the same attention as historic losses of bald eagles or sandhill cranes, but they are going to have much more of an impact,” said Hillary Young, a conservation biologist at the University of California. Kevin Gaston, a conservation biologist at the University of Exeter, lamented that: “This is the loss of nature.”

    A chickadee

My short story “Out of The Silence,” which appeared in the Spring 2020 issue of subTerrain Literary Magazine (Issue #85), tells the story of Katherine, a blind elder whose digital app failed to warn the world of the sudden global loss of birds with disastrous ecological consequences.

“The irony was that, once the birds vanished, the pests the fungus was originally targeted recovered with a vengeance. Some birds eat as many as 500 insects a day in the summer. Without insect-eating birds like bluebirds, wrens and chickadees to eat them, the pests exploded in numbers, causing ecosystems to collapse worldwide. 2041, which experienced an extremely warm summer, brought in swarms of grasshoppers to Asia and Europe, destroying whole harvests like a plague. I was reminded of Mao Tse Tung’s 1960 edict to kill all sparrows who were eating the seeds in the fields; instead, they caused a horrific plague of locusts that caused famine. With the disappearance of a single bird—the House Swift—agricultural pests in China quadrupled in 2041. Without the Evening Grosbeak, spruce budworm destroyed huge sections of the western forests of North America in the forties. Without the oystercatcher there to keep it in check, the Salt Marsh periwinkle destroyed a majority of the salt marshes of south-eastern USA by the late forties.

“Ironically, the pests did the most damage on the giant monocrops meant to benefit the most from the killer fungus. The ag-giants responded by dousing their wheat, maize, rice and cotton fields with even more pesticides—to which many pests had already become resistant. Instead of addressing the pests, they wiped out pollinating insects like bees and butterflies. With no pollinators, even GMO crops—like soybeans, corn, potatoes and sugar beets—failed and collapsed within a few years. China resorted to hand-pollinating their orchards. The rest of the world followed their desperate action. The price of chocolate skyrocketed when arthropods crashed the cacao agroforestry in Indonesia and the Ivory Coast. Food prices soared everywhere; soon the Foodland grocery store near where I lived grew empty. I quit drinking coffee; its price had risen to $60 a pound after the infestations of coffee plantations in Indonesia, India and Vietnam, followed by Brazil and Mexico in 2042. By the late 40s, the disappearance of insectivorous and pollinating birds meant no more apples, nuts, olives, or wine—among a host of staple foods.”

A nuthatch

In short, a healthy diverse bird population means a healthy habitat, a healthy ecosystem AND a healthy human mind. "Nature conservation therefore not only ensures our material basis of life, but it also constitutes an investment in the well-being of us all," says Methorst.

References:

Methorst, J. et al. (2020): The importance of species diversity for human well-being in Europe. Ecological Economics, doi: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106917

Munteanu, Nina. 2020. “Out of the Silence.” subTerrain Literary Magazine, Issue 85. Vancouver, BC

Nairn, Carly. 2021. Eco-Watch.

Senckenberg Biodiversität und Klima Forschungszentrum. 2020. Online: https://www.senckenberg.de/en/pressemeldungen/biological-diversity-evokes-happiness-more-bird-species-in-their-vicinity-increase-life-satisfaction-of-europeans-as-much-as-higher-income/

You can learn more about Nina Munteanu and her book Water Is... on the website https://themeaningofwater.com/ There's more to see in the podcast "The Meaning of Writing and Water" at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN0j033hAXQ&feature=youtu.be

Schroedinger's Bird ???????

 Quantum Mechanics is weird. In a quantum world of photons and sub-atomic particles, things behave very differently from the world that we can observe and know. It’s extremely difficult to understand that light is both a photon particle and a wave. It’s very hard to believe that a particle doesn’t have a specific property until you measure it. And until then it has all the possible properties you might measure. Famously, Einstein himself didn’t believe this, saying “God doesn’t play dice with the universe”. 

 

Courtesy: Jadvani_Sharad at Pixabay.com

 

Equally famous is the argument that Erwin Schroedinger used to illustrate this apparent impossibility. Schroedinger described a “thought experiment”, where there is a cat and a radioactive atom sealed inside a box. There is also a Geiger counter, which will detect radiation if and when the atom decays. If it detects radiation, it breaks a flask of poison which kills the cat.  The only way to find out if radiation has been detected is to open the box. According to quantum theory, until that is done, the radiation both has and hasn’t occurred, and therefore the cat is both alive and dead until the box is opened.

Diagram of Schrödinger's cat thought experiment.
Roughly based on Schroedingerscat3.jpg. Dhatfield-own work. CC Creative Commons.

Einstein, with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, published another thought experiment (called the EPR paper) which demonstrated another paradox. This thought experiment showed another seemingly ridiculous outcome of quantum mechanics math. It went (more or less) like this:

• ·         Two particles are set in motion towards each other with the same momentum. They interact with each other briefly at a known position.
• ·         This relationship between the two particles is called “entanglement”.
• ·         These particles have a range of momentum and location. Until you measure them, they have all of those with some probability. (Yes, hard to believe, but that's what quantum mechanics math says).
• ·         When you measure, say, the momentum of one of the two articles it resolves to have only the one measured momentum.
• ·         But magically, as you do that, the second particle, which may have travelled anywhere in the universe, resolves its momentum to the same value.(How it know to do this, and at the same instant?)
  

It seemed clear to Einstein that this kind of action-at-a-distance was impossible. He said it therefore followed that quantum mechanics was incomplete. There must be some additional factor that was being overlooked and which could explain this paradox.

Shockingly, experiments in the 1970’s and 80’s showed that entanglement is not impossible, but a real phenomenon. Hard to believe, but true.

And now to birds. No, Schroedinger didn’t really do any thought experiments on birds. Sorry.

Birds are astonishingly good at finding their way over vast distances. Homing pigeons have been used for centuries to carry messages back to their homes from hundreds of kilometers away. Some species of birds migrate thousands of kilometers each season, and find their way back to the nest that used in the previous season.

Some slightly nasty scientists have tested migrating abilities. They captured 30 white-crowned sparrows near Seattle migrating South from Alaska to Southern California. They packed the birds into crates and flew them 2,300 miles to Princeton, New Jersey. When they released them, the adult sparrows set off in a direct course South-West toward Southern California. 

 

White-crowned Sparrow. Photo: Steve Ryan, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Even hummingbirds, with brains the size of a pea, put human navigation abilities to shame. A researcher described finding a hummingbird hovering opposite the hook where he hung a feeder each year. He was planning to put it out in a few days' time. The hummingbird showed up earlier than expected, and remembered exactly where the feeder was supposed to be. 

Photo: Simon Shapiro

 We don’t know exactly how birds are able to navigate so well. It’s clear that they use multiple strategies, including:

• ·         Following rivers, mountains or the seashore
• ·         Using senses of smell and sound, both of which are far more acute than humans’.
• ·         Navigating using the sun and stars. Like ancient mariners they might be using these to identify their latitude and longitude. 
  

But the really mysterious ability is that birds are able to sense the earth’s magnetic field. This requires exquisite sensitivity. Scientists have been working for decades to figure out how the mechanism works.

Birds need some light to do it. Not much, because even the dim light of stars at night is enough. But total darkness inhibits the ability.

Enter Entanglement

There is growing consensus that the ability involves crytochrome, a light-sensing protein that exists in birds’ eyes. A photon colliding with crytochrome can disturb electrons in two molecules, creating an entangled radical pair of molecules, each with an odd number of electrons. They return to equilibrium very quickly – about 100 microseconds. During that time, they can flip-flop between two states of electron spins – each molecule changing at exactly the same time, because of the entanglement. The relative time spent in each of the two states can be influenced by the earth’s magnetism. And each state can participate in different chemical reactions, producing different chemicals. These product chemicals – as yet unidentified – could be the mechanism for the bird’s brain to sense magnetism. 

 Scientists are working on harnessing entanglement to build quantum computers. It seems that birds (and evolution) beat us in the race to make practical use of quantum entanglement.