I was very much affected by these photos in the latest issue of Audubon Magazine: http://www.audubonmagazine.org/onepicture/onepicture1003.html. For some reason, they reproduced it in a small, low-res format. To see a better version, go to this pdf and go to page 21 of this presentation: http://faculty.philau.edu/AshleyJ/Philly_U_MD_Bamford.pdf (if you want to get really depressed, read the whole presentation.)

If you’ve ever wondered whether a little trash makes any difference, this picture gives a moving answer. The bottle caps, cigarette lighters, and hundreds of other pieces of trash that killed this albatross may have come from half way around the world. Albatross will scoop up just about anything they see on the surface of the ocean because in pre-plastic days, virtually anything floating on the ocean was food. Also, apparently, flying fish lay their eggs in long strings attached to floating objects, and albatross feed on them by scooping up whatever they see floating. Then they go back and regurgitate to their chicks. Unfortunately, all the plastic junk the parents have ingested ends up in the chicks. In this case, it was enough to kill the chick.

These photos are a tragic demonstration of the interconnectedness of our environment. Every bottle cap or plastic bag we throw away on the sidewalk can end up washing into a storm grate, into a river, out into the ocean, and eventually into the gut of an albatross chick.