The sparrow and the duckweed

Watching the flying pigs strip the feeder this morning, I was reminded of the duckweed in Lake Austin. Both were introduced, the seed-eating bird to the country and the duck-food weed to the lake and both quickly spread and multiplied.

Mrs. Charm looked it up. The house sparrow was introduced to Brooklyn, it says here, in 1851, to control caterpillars. The weed, I already knew, was sown in the 1940s to attract ducks to Austin’s fake lake created by dams on the Texas Colorado River to create a picturesque scene for the populace. Bird and weed ran wild.

The sparrows now are found everywhere people are, and their seed feeders, of course. They are the most abundant bird in the world. And there are still plenty of caterpillars. The weed was even less successful. It attracted few ducks but became a magnet for outboard motors, clogging them and the lake itself. So much so that the lake is artificially lowered annually to cut back the weed. Heh.