Thaindian News

June 6, 2010 (Pen Men at Work): Photographs of wide-eyed pelicans and seagulls frozen in oil have manifested themselves as the devastating Gulf oil spill’s emblems of bereavement. They are grisly representations of a summer polluted before it commenced.

Some of the pictures are that of screeching seagulls and magnificent brown pelicans covered in oil. These pictures of the helpless birds are heartrending and can melt even the toughest of professional photographers. The ghoulish pictures of these birds are symbolic of the ecological calamity that has struck the American shores in Louisiana.

Wildlife recovery experts have mentioned that it was a heartbreaking sight for them to witness the birds they have rescued engulfed by oil. The piteous appearance of the defenseless birds has captured the psyche of the American nation.

Birds that get smeared with oil can die from being too cold or too hot since the crude oil gets in the way with the innate oils that make them water-resistant. That signifies that their susceptible skin experiences the extreme fluctuations in temperature. Even in the comparatively placid Gulf waters, the birds can pass away from hypothermia. This data was stated by Ken Rosenberg, who happens to be the director of conservation science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. He also mentioned that the birds can drown.

The brown pelican, the state emblem of Louisiana, is now also the emblem of death, not merely for the photographed birds, but for the thousands of unobserved birds, who have been consumed by the toxic oil spill.

Rosenberg has also communicated that the sight of the oiled birds is a reliable indicator of the dance of death in the entire ecological system, which has liquidated countless lives of birds.

The pictures of some class of birds, particularly those that hang about concealed in the marshes- such as the clapper rail, seaside sparrow and mottled duck- will not be taken smeared with oil. They will vanish unobserved as a part of an unnoticed tragedy.