When I was a boy, bird poop was everywhere. Cars parked on the street would be covered with it. More than once I was hit on the head while riding my bike or walking down the street. I remember, too, digging my hands into wet sand at the beach and bringing up scores of sea creatures: tiny crabs, shells of all kinds (many inhabited), sand dollars, etc. As a young man home from university years later I did the same thing and brought up nothing but sand. And today, bird droppings are rare items. I cannot remember the last time I was concerned about birds overhead doing their business on me.
A passage from the biography of Alexander von Humboldt (1769 – 1859) that I have been reading brought these memories to mind. In February 1803, von Humboldt was voyaging by ship from Guayaquil, Ecuador, to Mexico:
The Pacific was full of life—it was as though the sea was paved with fish. Pods of dolphins passed by, ‘resembling herds of swine.’ There was a plethora of birds, too: pelicans, gulls, sea swallows, so that ‘the sea looked like a huge pond covered in birds.’
—Maren Meinhardt, Alexander von Humboldt: How the Most Famous Scientist of the Romantic Age Found the Soul of Nature (2018)
A huge pond covered in birds! Roadkill of the Industrial Revolution. Lord, what have we done?