Nature's Potato Chips

By: Bristol

Newly hatched Canada goose chicks in south central Oregon

I was once acquainted with a family of Canada Geese. I remember the discovery of the nest occupied by an angrily hissing parent, the careful avoidance of the nest thereafter, the waiting for the little goslings to hatch...and at last they were spotted, having emerged from the shell a pale chartreuse color, and faintly damp. There were eight of them, eight fuzzy babies that followed the two parents along the beach and to the water. They hung around the immediate vicinity, making for easy viewing. But a day later there were only seven goslings. And later on we only spied six. As time went on they disappeared one by one, until only three remained. These three progressed through the awkward goose teenager-hood, fledged, and may still be out there somewhere. I remember thinking how sad that of those eight adorable, fluffy goslings, only three made it to adulthood.

Herring gull chick in Northern Norway

What I hate to see most is the destruction of potential. And potential is all that we see in a young animal, from tiny fish to our own helpless offspring to the fluffy goslings. How cruel, we say, when one of those young lives is cut short. But cruelty, kindness, evil and good are words and concepts that humans invented. We need them to survive our complicated social worlds.

Nature isn’t cruel or evil, it is simply amoral. The natural world doesn’t dictate that the cutest animals live and ugly ones die, or that predators deserve to suffer because they killed a baby bunny or gosling. There is only one very simple rule that all living things abide by in one form or another: survive. Every living thing wants to survive every bit as much as you do.

Those adorable goslings were food that enabled a gull to live another day, or an eagle chick to be fed. It may even have simply become sick, and become food for bacteria and sand fleas. And from the adult geese's point of view, only one thing mattered that breeding season: raising at least one chick successfully. They did not fail because most of their chicks died, they succeeded because they were able to raise three.

A tern egg, broken open by a predatory gull.

It may seem harsh, but most young animals, including goslings, ducklings, and baby bunnies, are really nature’s potato chips. They’re small, helpless, mobile packages of proteins and fats. If they survive to maturity, the most they can hope for is to be harder to prey upon. That is not to say that their story isn’t worth something- each perspective of a life form is worthwhile, because each is a vector for the continuation of life.

A Caspian Tern chick near fledging, with alphanumeric bands on its legs.

Another story: I was working with Caspian Terns, and our group had recently banded about 300 nearly-fledged chicks. The bands go on their legs and are used to tell where the birds go in their migrations and in their summer feeding grounds. It's a lot of work in the hot sun, and you get bitten and clawed. But we still loved them, and watched them grow as proudly as if we were their parents. These chicks were now, about a week later, beginning to fly. As we touted equipment down the beach, we watched a small group of fledglings take to the air. I think we all felt oddly proud of their accomplishment; having survived the dangers of predatory gulls and eagles, the torments of their own tern neighbors, and the precarious food supply, these chicks had made it to the next stage of their lives, and it was airborne! Suddenly, swooping low over our heads was a peregrine falcon. My first instinct was awe: how lucky to see a falcon out here! Of course, it made a beeline for those new fledglings. With effortless grace, it snatched a newly banded chick out of the air. We watched the falcon dismember our fledgling, first pulling out tufts of feathers, then ripping the legs up. Falcons are very particular about their food. With binoculars we could even make out the field-readable alphanumeric band on the tern. *sigh* Another one bites the dust...

A fledgling Caspian Tern, marked by the brownish wash, rounded wings, light cap and pale bill.

But the thing was, we got some good looks at that Peregrine. It was a fledgling itself, with beautifully marked flight feathers, a stripey chest, and a raggedy tail from sitting in the nest. It was probably only a couple months old, still learning to fend for itself. That kill was a huge marker of success for the rest of its life. We, as tern researchers, had developed this emotional attachment to a wild animal, and another young wild animal had killed it to survive.

Juvenile Peregrine Falcon, after preying on a juvenile Caspian Tern

My last story has been repeated many times on social media. Someone posts to a local birding group, telling of a hawk that killed one of the songbirds they feed. How can I stop that hawk taking my birds? they ask. And I think to myself, would you deprive that hawk's chicks of food? Or ask it to starve because you don't find it as attractive as the chickadees and juncos?

I think it's important to remember that whatever our feelings about nature, it is neither a Mother Earth nor Red in Tooth and Claw, at least entirely. Nature is just amoral. Everything serves an ecological purpose and no species is worth more protection than another because it has an aesthetic or emotional value to humans. The goal of all life is only to keep living. And death is one of the foundations of life.

A new generation of California Gulls in eastern Washington.

"Nature is not only “beautiful or nostalgic…is always against us, because it knows no meaning, no pity, no sympathy, because it knows nothing and is absolutely mindless: the total antithesis of ourselves, absolutely inhuman” -Gerhard Richter, 1986