Sunday, April 25, 2010

Birds

I love birds. I'm a keen birdwatcher, and I find pleasure in listening to birds' songs and watching birds through my binoculars (or much better, with the help of a spotting scope), trying to find out what particular species they belong to. Unfortunately, I no longer have plenty of free time to devote to this hobby, but I still get carried away by a feeling of joy each time I hear a melodious bird song (now is the best time for that) or see some small bird darting through the bushes.Today I've heard for the first time this year the cry of the bee-eater, high up in the sky. For me, it announces the arrival of hot weather; now summer is just around the corner.

These spring days are great! Every day I go to University, I can hear the singing of dozens of birds (the fact that there are hundreds and hundreds of trees there contributes greatly to this): I hear sparrows (of course; they're just everywhere!), white wagtails, serins, goldfinches, greenfinches and the occasional robin or blackbird. There are many magpies as well, and sometimes I hear other birds such as the great tit (no jokes, please); one day I even heard a hoopoe. When I lived in my small village, hoopoes were a common sight, but in Castellón they don't show up too often.

But there's something that worries me. In other countries such as the United Kingdom, there are hundreds of thousands of amateur birdwatchers (the RSPB —Royal Society for the Protection of Birds— alone has over a million members), while in Spain they are far fewer (SEO —Sociedad Española de Ornitología— has only about 11,000 members). But worse than that, is the fact that the new generations don't even know the names of the most common birds; for them, every bird they see must be a sparrow, and some can't even name the sparrow: all those flying little creatures are just "birds". I find this utterly disheartening. How can you make people love birds, if nobody bothers to get to know what they really are, not even a bit? Maybe it's because now I'm living in a city (a small city, by the way); maybe in the small villages of Castellón people can actually differentiate between the main bird species... I hope that's the case. The same thing happens with tree and bush species. Has everyone lost contact with nature or what? Sometimes I feel I should have never left my dear little village...

But there's a problem with small villages: many people know the birds' and plants' names, but unluckily there are many hunters as well. I will never understand what's so fun about killing a living creature just for the sake of it. Well, at least, hunters have a big knowledge of nature, and love it their way. But the problem is, up to date I have yet to meet a hunter who wouldn't enjoy killing an eagle if he knew that nobody was watching and he wouldn't get fined. Usually they abide by the law just for fear of being caught, not because they feel that killing endangered animal species is wrong.

The only good thing I can think of about hunting is that many natural reserves have survived until the present day just because they have been preserved for the practice of hunting; we mustn't forget that many of the first conservationists were hunters who changed their minds and turned to protecting animals instead of killing them. My admiration goes to them; as for all the hunters that mill around our villages today, I wish that every single one of them would experience that change; Mother Nature would be deeply grateful to them.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Now my happiness is complete

I'm going to become a father!!

You can't start to imagine how happy I am. Finally life begins to have a meaning; I'm happily married to the woman I love, I'm studying what I like most (Translation and Interpreting) and now the circle of life is complete (insert The Lion King soundtrack here). A new generation is on the way, and I'm proud to be responsible for it.

In fact, I'm not yet fully aware of the importance of this event; for the moment I'm just happy and proud. Once the child is born and takes a liking to breaking into crying in the small hours of the night, I'm afraid I'll be brought back to reality with a bump :) Hopefully it'll be a quiet baby; I'll keep my fingers crossed...

I just can't wait to hold the baby in my arms! In about a month, we'll know whether we're having a boy or a girl; I'll keep you up to date!