Love Letter To

Love Letter To

Rappahannock Robins

Dear Robins: In writing you who have come to grace this favored section of the Old Dominion with your presence another spring and Bummer, no slight is intended to robins elsewhere. We single you out because we see you •round us and thrill to your cheerful matin and vesper •ongs. We love you so that many of us can’t bear the thought of your eventual extinction, which, it is authorlta tively stated, can come about In the not too distant future. Now get this straight, dear robins. Man today is not out deliberately to annihilate you. When he brought. about the extinction of the passenger pigeon it was not intentional. He assumed that no matter how great the slaughter, there would always be plenty of passenger pigeons to be shot. But the last passenger pigeon died in the Zoological Gardens of Cincinnati fifty years ago. It could happen to you, too, because of the ever-increasing widespread use of synthetic pesticides in man’s battle against harmful insects and plant diseases. Also, it could happen to other of oui feathered friends and wildlife In general. / In your case it has been shown that the trouble comes from eating earthworms that have picked up some of the

ison which has seeped into die soil. And it is believed that the harm exists even where these pesticides are used according to directions and not excessively. What a lot of such poison must be in the ground and adjacent watercourses

where no^^more jthan

used, when you consider that In many orchards the trees •re sprayed from 13 t© 16 times each season i « Is there anything you can do to keep alive under prevailing conditions? We can hardly suggest that you change your diet and thus avoid Ingesting these poisons. If only you had the knaek of many of the insects of building up resistance to one type of pesticide after another! Then the outlook for your continuing pres ence here season after sea