The birds and the beetles....

I've recently been able to catch up on some movie watching (thank you NetFlix) and two documentaries that have really stood out are "Ghost Bird" and "Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo".
These films, although both about animals, have very different story arcs, but have some pretty interesting similarities.

Ghost bird is about the reported sightings of the extinct (or so everyone thought) Ivory Billed woodpecker (photo above showing a male and female from the 1930s, wikipedia.org).  This bird is/was the second largest woodpecker in the southeastern US where it was found in native forests, and was especially known to strip the bark off of oak trees looking for beetles (their primary forage).   The last official sightings of living birds was back in the 1940s, and ever since the birds has been considered extinct.  In 2004 there was a new wave of sightings by some prominent birders followed by a video purporting to show a living bird in flight.  There was a lot of media buzz, money for research (and as the film points out this money was mostly diverted from other confirmed species), and a lot of attention to the small town in Arkansas near the reported sightings.  Without spoiling it too much, there is little tangible evidence that the bird is really still alive.

In the second film, Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, the writer explores the fascination for insects (mainly beetles and crickets in the film) by the Japanese.  The film is very slow but methodical in showing how insects are imbued into the Japanese culture more so that anywhere else in the world.  Let's face it, grocery stores in the US don't normally stock insect rearing supplies and live beetles on the shelves!  But in Japan they do.   Much like we might breed cats or dogs and think nothing of going to the local kennel club show, in Japan you can crowd into a venue on a Saturday with other folks and gleefully peruse the various booths to find that new perfect insect pet.

So I said that the films have some interesting similarities.  I think these films give us different view about the loss of nature and about how we deal with it.  The sense of loss that I got from Ghost Bird was especially evident in interviews with a couple of scientists who are shown with preserved specimens that are locked away in museum collections, but also in the local townspeople in Arkansas who had hoped to hitch their wagon to the new flood of birders who would flock (pun intended) to see this rare bird.  The loss of the Ivory Billed is particularly difficult as you can still talk to people who saw this bird in the wild and hold museum specimens in your hand.  In Japan there is still a strong sense that nature is to be brought into the home, either through art, music, or insect pets.  It's explained that in Japan there is a philosophy of Mono no aware, which means the sensitivity to ephemeral things, and a sadness in their passing.  This is what drives many to appreciate nature or any form of experience, including insects.   I also think there is a strong sense of Mono no aware in Ghost Bird, but one that cannot be reversed, no matter how badly we wish it to be so.