Jan., 1937 
 
 
              THE THICK-BILLED PARROT IN CHIHUAHUA 
                               By ALDO LEOPOLD 
 
   The physics of beauty is one department of natural science still in the
Dark Ages. 
Not even the manipulators of bent space have tried to solve its equations.
Everybody 
knows, for example, that the autumn landscape in the north woods is the land,
plus 
a red maple, plus a ruffed grouse. In terms of conventional physics, the
grouse repre- 
sents only a millionth of either the mass or the energy of an acre. Yet subtract
the 
grouse and the whole thing is dead. An enormous amount of some kind of motive
power 
has been lost. 
   It is easy to say that the loss is all in our mind's eye, but is there
any sober 
ecologist who will agree? He knows full well that there has been an ecological
death, 
the significance of which is inexpressible in terms of contemporary science.
A Russian 
philosopher, Ouspensky, has called this imponderable essence the numenon
of material 
things. It stands in contradistinction to phenomenon which is ponderable
and pre- 
dictable, even to the tossings and turnings of the remotest star. 
   The grouse is the numenon of the north woods, the bluejay of the hickory
groves, 
the whisky-jack of the muskegs, the pifionero of the juniper foothills. Ornithological

texts do not record these facts. I suppose they are new to science, however
obvious to 
the discerning scientist. Be that as it may, I here record the discovery
of the numenon 
of the Sierra Madre: the Thick-billed Parrot (Rhynchopsitta pachyrhyncha).

    He is a discovery only because so few have visited his haunts. Once there,
only 
the deaf and blind could fail to perceive his role in the mountain life and
landscape. 
Indeed you have hardly finished breakfast before the chattering flocks leave
their 
roost on the rim rocks and perform a sort of morning drill in the high reaches
of the 
dawn. Like squadrons of cranes they wheel and spiral, loudly debating with
each other 
the question (which also puzzles you) of whether this new day which creeps
slowly 
over the canyons is bluer and golder than its predecessors, or less so. The
vote 
being a draw, they repair by separate companies to the high mesas, for their
breakfast 
of pine-seed-on-the-half-shell. They have not yet seen you. 
    But a little later, as you begin the steep ascent out of the canyon,
some sharp-eyed 
parrot, perhaps a mile away, espies this strange creature puffing up the
trail where 
only deer or lion, bear or turkey, are licensed to travel. Breakfast is forgotten.
With 
a whoop and a shout the whole gang is awing and coming at you. As they circle
over- 
head you wish fervently for a parrot dictionary. Are they demanding, what-the-devil

business have you in these parts? Or are they, like an avian chamber-of-commerce,

merely making sure you appreciate the glories of their home town, its weather,
its 
citizens, and its glorious future as compared with any and all other times
and places 
whatsoever? It might be either or both. And there flashes through your mind
the sad 
premonition of what will happen when the road is built, and this riotous
reception 
committee first greetsthe tourist-with-a-gun. 
    It is soon clear that you are a dull inarticulate fellow, unable to respond
by so 
much as a whistle to the standard amenities of the Sierra morn. And after
all, there 
are more pine cones in the woods than have yet been opened, so let's finish
breakfastl 
This time they may settle upon some tree below the rim rock, giving you the
chance 
to sneak out to the edge and look down. There for the first time you see
color; velvet 
green uniforms with scarlet and yellow epaulets and black helmets, sweeping
noisily from 
 
 
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