Stealing, Fighting and Invading

What do you do when you don't belong?

House sparrow, pencil drawing from a reference photo taken in my front yard on a plant print. (Then tinkered with in photoshop because some pieces of art just don’t behave and this one is still perfectly imperfect. Sorry about your beak, dude!)

Nearly twenty years ago, when I first bought my house, the month of June was a cacophony. The red-tailed hawks nesting across the street routinely set loose noisy fledglings the first week of June. This was bad enough, but the hawks then proceeded to have a month-long highest-decibel contest with the fledgling kestrels nesting in my front yard pine. They never tried to eat one another that I noticed, but it didn’t stop them from complaining at volume 11 that someone might become a snack.

I was a bit of a curmudgeon about the noise because it routinely started at first light. I also grumbled when I had to put a male kestrel back in the pine when his bigger sisters pushed him out. Then I rolled my eyes when a fledgling hawk stood in my neighbors’ sprinklers for so long that he couldn’t fly and then tried to play in traffic. I had to run him down and put him in a crate to dry off, hoping he would be a little smarter for the experience. The truth is though, that I complained about my neighbors and their seriously annoying kids because I thought they would always be here.

Yet, every year there were also more house sparrows and more European starlings in my yard. So, I should have seen it coming. The starlings took over the little falcons’ nest hollow and the house sparrows took over the other hollows in the pines. My kestrels stopped coming back every year. The red-tailed hawks remained, but it wasn’t the same. I wish I had appreciated the kestrels more.

I knew the population of North America’s smallest falcon was in decline. I have not read a definitive reason why, but it’s safe to say that it has a lot to do with the loss of open space habitat and the decline of insect species. Science almost always points a finger at the European starlings outcompeting them for natural nest cavities as well.

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“In total, North America has lost an estimated 2 million kestrels since 1970, says Chris McClure, executive vice president of science and conservation at The Peregrine Fund.”

What is Causing the Perplexing Decline of the American Kestrel,” Audubon Magazine, Spring 2023

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I feel so conflicted about house sparrows and starlings. On the one hand, starlings are beautiful, smart songbirds with a real knack for mimicking sounds. And house sparrows are sharply dressed rabble-rousers whose gang fights always make me laugh out loud. (They totally remind me of a bunch of very drunk patrons shoved out of the bar at closing and fighting in the parking lot.) Despite the charms of both species, they are still invasive.

They don’t belong in my yard.

In fairness, there shouldn’t be Aleppo pines in my front yard. These nonnative pines were planted in the 1920s around the time my house was built in what was probably desert transitional coastal sage scrub. When my pines were saplings, English sparrows had just started setting up shop in California, having spread from their 1851 introduction to Central Park in New York. The European starling, which was also introduced to Central Park in 1890 arrived in California in the 1940s.

Yet, they are here, and I am here, and my earliest American ancestors only arrived a couple of hundred years before them. At most, I am a 16^th generation American. The house sparrows in my yard (which add a generation every year) are 172^nd generation Americans. So, who really belongs in my yard?

I think the answer to that question is none of us.

According to USGS,

“An invasive species is an introduced, nonnative organism (disease, parasite, plant, or animal) that begins to spread or expand its range from the site of its original introduction and that has the potential to cause harm to the environment, the economy, or to human health.”

Yep, that pretty much describes the lot of us.

Invasive species are the bane of my professional existence. As the Co-Executive Director of a land conservancy, most of my work is done behind a desk and in meetings these days. All the same, that doesn’t stop me from sighing when I see invasive Russian thistle choking out coastal sage scrub. There is nothing more important to me than conserving native plant and animal species. I tell people that it is critical that we recognize invasive species and remove them from our native habitats - and I feel like a fraud when I say it.

I suppose I could argue that humans have been in North America for tens of thousands of years, and we are all the same species. So, therefore, I’m not invasive. However, after dispatching 200 brown-headed cowbirds at a dairy this afternoon that argument rings hollow as well.

I help the biologists with abatement permits to clear out the cowbirds they trap because I can feed them to my raptors. The permits are to help the population of endangered California gnatcatchers the cowbirds parasitize on a nearby preserve. And every time I clear out a holding, the question of who belongs plays in my head over and over.  

Brown-headed cowbirds are not exactly an invasive species. Originally, they were buffalo birds, following the herds across the plains, literally in their footsteps. Where the buffalo roamed, they churned up insects and the brown-headed cowbird had a feast. However, having a roaming food source meant that they couldn’t settle anywhere to pause and nest.

The cowbirds evolved to do something that is a trope in some great horror movies. They laid their eggs in other species of birds’ nests, leaving the unwitting parent to raise an interloper. It honestly sounds terrifying if you are human, but it’s a rather elegant solution that continued to serve them well when cattle replaced the buffalo. Then the cattle grazed a path to once unknown habitats. Brown-headed cowbirds followed one of human’s most important food sources all the way to California. So, who belongs?

It is impossible to take up space and do no harm. The older I get the more I understand why Jainism is one of the oldest religions and why the ultimate dedication to Jainism includes vows in which practitioners limit food, liquid, and movement - sometimes to the point of their death. There is no other way to cause no harm. You cannot use resources. You cannot tread on the earth. I know this is true, and I know that old age is going to teach me what it means to take up less space, but I am not ready to believe that none of us belong. I have to belong or why am I here? I think I just need to learn how to be a better neighbor.

Nature may not deal in niceties, but nature creates habitats by evolving each species to both give and take. Natural selection is the great equalizer. Once upon time, my species was perfectly crafted to be in the balance. Now we have the ability to live in any climate, cure most any disease, and we don’t have to rely on nature-enforced genetic adaptations. Instead, we are likely evolving to better suit our technology and eschewing any pressure nature puts on us. Nature can’t make us become better neighbors. It’s something we are going to have to choose.  I guess all I can do is choose.

In the UK, where house sparrows rightly belong, the species has been on the UK’s Endangered Species Red List since 2002. If the problem isn’t solved, then someday there will be no house sparrows in England. I must admit, either way, I hope they remain in my yard, invasive or not. I would desperately miss the whirling dervish in the bushes when the sparrows decide to throw down.

I think all I can do is get to know the neighbors that were here before me and the neighbors that I have now and learn from them all. I can try to understand who they are. I can try to give as much as I take and make sure all of my neighbors, human or otherwise, have what they need.

All I can do is plant native plants for native pollinators and native birds and give them a chance. All I can do is learn the natural history of all of us who are invasive species while honoring and respecting those who already had a place here. I can try to help the balance with curiosity, generosity, and humility. I just wish that were an easier task. But, I want to belong and so, I have to try. I hope that’s enough.