I’ve just been nominated for a “Blogging for Global Change” award by fellow blogger, CraftyGreenPoet of Edinburgh Scotland. The award originates at Climate of Our Future, a blog dedicated to discussing climate change and how it can be prevented. The “award” is a way for individuals to acknowledge and ecourage eachother’s efforts and make links with others. This is how it’s described on the site:

This award goes out to all of the Bloggers for Positive Global Change. It’s not limited to any specific ideologies, religions or philosophies. It puts a premium on human compassion and the desire to make the world a better place for all of us, without exception.

The participation rules are simple:
1. When you get tagged, write a post with links to up to 5 blogs that you think are trying to change the world in a positive way.
2. In your post, make sure you link back to Climate of our Future.
3. Leave a comment or message for the bloggers you’re tagging, so they know they’re now part of the meme [“Meme” is a new word for me. It’s dictionary meaning is “a system through which behaviour is passed on from one individual to another” — kind of like a chain of people, I guess.].
4. Optional: Proudly display the “Bloggers For Positive Global Change” award badge with a link to the post that you write up.

Wow! Well, I’m honored to be nominated. I like the idea of making connections and supporting people who are concerned about the world and want to make a positive difference. I hope I can live up to the nomination.

I’d like to nominate True Stitches, the blog of my friend Heather, who believes in making the world a better place one stitch at a time (and in other ways as well).

I’d also like to nominate author Diane Haynes and her Wildlife Rescue Series blog in which she talks about her wildlife-rescue-mystery-themed YA novels, the writing life and her concern for nature and animals.

Here are a few more intriguing web logs written by people who care about people, animals and the natural environment (a couple of them have already been nominated for the Blogging for Global Change award):

Green Girls Global

World Changing

Teaching Environmental Sustainability

Whorled Leaves

Wardrobe Refashion

Bee Creative

Sew Green

Olympia Dumster Divers

(some of my latest “green” one-inch buttons)

Every year in mid May small yellow birds (which I’ve figured out are at least two kinds of warblers) make a brief appearance in my backyard. Their bright feathers and musical song contrast with the modest browns and plane chirps of the usual backyard crowd. I always enjoy seeing them, and somewhere in the back of my mind I knew they may have migrated a long way to get here, but the epic quality of their journey never really hit me until I heard bird researcher Bridget Strutchbury speak last month.

Strutchbury, author of Silence of the Songbirds, spoke about the double life of songbirds who winter in Central and South America and breed in the north, the huge “storms” of birds migrating north each year (flying mostly at night), and the alarming decline in the numbers of breeding birds (a drop of 30-50% since 1965).

That little yellow bird passing through my backyard has faced loss of its tropical forest winter home, been forced to survive in scrubby left-over habitat, dodged toxic agricultural pesticides (often pesticides restricted or banned in the north), then flown the long gruelling route north with fewer places to stop and city lights disrupting night-time navigation, then arrived in the north to find breeding forests and grasslands smaller and closer to cities and farms where predators such as crows, jays and feral cats lurk.

Put in this light, the fact that these little yellow birds have even made it to my yard at all is pretty amazing. I find it really distrubing to think that one spring they might not. If this happens it wont just mean the disappearance of birdsong from our neighbourhoods. Strutchbury points out: “If a species goes extinct or its  population drops to very low numbers, the ecological roles that it played in nature are lost. Some species are so specialized that their services can no be replaced by other animals, so their loss creates a ripple effect. . . . Their jobs as pollinators, fruit-eaters, insect-eaters, scavengers and nutrient recyclers will not get done, and this will disrupt ecosystems and affect everyone on the planet.”

Things we can do to help save the songbirds:

– drink shade-grown coffee

– buy organic produce (especially from Latin America)

– create backyard habitats

– keep lawns pesticide-free

– turn city lights out at night

– keep cats indoors

– buy recycled paper products

– buy wood products certified by the Forest Stewardship Council

– pressure companies manufacturing pesticides to meet international standards

If you want to know the answer to the above question (or just want a laugh), you might want to check out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-NWbzB3ut0

It’s refreshing (if I can use that word in this context) to see activism use humour to get its message out.