Saturday, May 29, 2010

Tragedy of the Commons

Remember the Little Ringed Plover's nest I talked about in earlier post? Today I went to check how the eggs have progressed so far and what I found was a car parking really near the nest and a man doing some work next to the car. What even made me more shocked was that there was only 1 egg left! Actually there were 4, but now the other 3 had already gone and the only one that's left was lying outside the nest which looked like a mess! I totally have no idea what happened to the nest. Was it because of a crow? or was it because of that man? I suddenly felt really down. That guy came to me and asked me if I was the one who put the 2 rocks on the ground over there, and yes, I put them since Tuesday in order to protect the bird's nest. The area where the birds built their nest is an abandoned car park where normally no one would come around and use the area. However, sometimes people drive their cars up here to make a u-turn, so I think that I should do something to prevent the nest from being crushed by those wheels. I put 2 fairly large rocks near the front of the nest and waited to see if the birds feel uncomfortable about those rocks or not, but the parent birds didn't seem to worry about that and still came back to the nest as usual. After I answered him that I was the one who put those rocks on the ground, he suddenly blamed me for doing that because he wanted to park his car inside that area and those rocks just got in his way. So I told him that there's bird nesting here and showed him where the nest is. At first, he couldn't even recognise that it's a bird nest. When he finally recognised the nest and the egg, he seemed to be more understandable and even picked up some rocks to put in front of the nest to show that he also wanted to protect the nest as well. I tried to explain to him that it's just too late and actually he's the one that should be blamed not me, but my Japanese skill is not that good so I just couldn't do anything much and left the area depressingly. I never thought these things would happen this fast. I was still watching parent birds coming back to the nest and incubating their eggs on Tuesday evening and what is left now is completely just a mess... It's the saddest thing ever happened to me in a year. I just felt so sad because I was so anticipated about this nest. I wished to take photos of this family through different stages. I wished to see the little chicks grow up slowly and I wished to see them flying out on their own. This abandoned car park is not owned by anyone and I just don't have any authority to prevent anyone from driving his car up over here. The Tragedy of the Commons of Garett Hardin might be about the result of over exploitation on public resources, but my version of the tragedy is about the effect from those actions happening in the commons.

2 comments:

Phil Slade said...

It's always sad when this sort of thing happens but you tried your best to protect the birds. Other people dont always have our understanding of what birds are doing.

Ayuwat Jearwattanakanok said...

Thanks Phil,
It makes me wish I can give these people some knowledge about how they should behave when there's birds nesting around in their place.