Other Nations

One of the wonderful things about the Project’s web components this year (cam, blog, forum) is the online community that has developed among the Peregrine Phanatics. Participation on the Forum, for example, has continued at the same level after Black Friday (June 6th) as it had before. And on Black Friday, membership and participation on the Forum increased five-fold as members posted news and updates every few minutes. This kind of stewardship, albeit virtual, is an essential requirement for any species-at-risk recovery effort to be successful in the long-run and was/is invaluable for me when we lost the chicks.

One of the fascinating things about these same web components is the intimacy. Every moment of our peregrines’ lives, and deaths, have been observed, noted, discussed and reviewed. From a scientific perspective, the webcam provides me, as a biologist and a resource manager, with unprecedented access to the minute details of the peregrines’ activities while the blog and forum let me interact with a much wider audience and in a whole new way. From the perspective of the peregrines’ fans online, it has been a window on an hitherto unknown (or not often viewed) facet of the wild. This virtual relationship between the peregrines’ fans and the peregrines themselves, is particularly intimate. One recent discussion on the Forum has been with regards to naming the chicks that died. This is the part of the uniquely human desire to acknowledge the loss of something important, to make sure that others understand how important it was. It is not an unusual reaction and it is a fundamental part of being human. It is however sometimes difficult to remember that this relationship is like looking through a one-way mirror. We spend hours watching, discussing, cheering and grieving online but the peregrines we are all so involved with, have no need of us, nor any desire to interact with us. We are of different nations, other nations.