Senseless Killing

Imagine the newborn nursery of any moderate-sized hospital, with its squalling, squirming babies, hours hold and full of life.  Now imagine some hateful monster driving a pick-up truck through that nursery, killing 2 out of every 10.  That’s the kind of carnage that happened on the night of July 1st  when some #%$#! jerk moved a barricade and drove through the protected nesting seabird colony at Rockport Beach Park.   Thirty-nine Black Skimmer chicks and juveniles were killed, representing 20% of this year’s succesful breeding season.  Just sickening.  

Not knowing of the incident, my kids and I visited the colony on Saturday, July 3rd and found 2 dead Skimmer chicks, many dead Laughing Gull chicks, including 1 that died right before our eyes as we walked around the road that circles the outside of the colony – the roadway that was blocked to car traffic.  Were these some of the last victims, succumbing to stress?   Going in I expected to see some dead birds in a large colony and tried to explain this to my kids.  They couldn’t understand why I didn’t help the dying Laughing Gull – but it’s heartless to tell a young child the chick was an obvious goner or that people didn’t generally interfere in the natural life and death cycle of a colony.   My 10 year old kept urging me to just put it in the water to save it.  Sorry son, but it doesn’t work that way. 

This Laughing Gull chick was barely alive when we found it and died within a couple of minutes.

What isn’t a natural mortality factor is idiots in pickups intentionally going around barriers, and from speculation in the news article,  intentionally killing nesting birds just for the hell of it.  Pathetic. 

Another just yards away

 

One of the lucky survivors

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