The Fields Looked White

More than a  half life ago when I sat lonely on a tractor pulling a plow, the sky filled with seagulls settling onto the freshly turned dirt. How they knew to come from miles away for this upturned feast was a mystery to me, but I loved having their company. As much as they looked the same, I could always find little variations in the subtle shadings on their feathers. 

My mind’s-eye filled with those images again after coming across a newspaper clipping dated 1921. It’s headline - “Gulls, Far From Tidewater, Cleaning Up Grasshoppers” - looks matter-of-fact enough. The secondary heading on the article was more interesting: “Mandan man says prairies of McLean County literally covered with white birds, repeating phenomena of Brigham Young’s days in Utah.” More about Brigham Young later.

The story in McLean County told how thousands upon thousands of seagulls suddenly appeared from no one knows where and landed in fields where the glut of grasshoppers had been destroying the farmers’ crops. Fields were literally white with them. The birds did not eat the grain, but instead gorged themselves by eating millions of grasshoppers and cutworms that were eating the crops. The farmers reportedly had tears in their eyes and said the Lord was responsible for this miracle of delivering them from the scourge.

A bit of reading took me to the history of the Mormon’s legendary “Miracle of the Gulls.” But two years before that these refugees from hostility and mistreatment encountered another miracle, “Miracle of the Quail.” They were on the trail to their new home in Utah, but their supplies were sparse and starvation loomed. While in camp a large flock of quail landed on them which they were able to easily catch and eat. According to the legend about 650 people ate their fill.

Brigham Young’s leadership kept the group going westward until they reached the area around present day Salt Lake City. For reasons of their own, they decided this was where they would stay and make their home. In 1847, the pioneers planted their first crop. Since it was late in the season, the yield proved low. The following spring, with seed from the first year, they tried again, only to see it invaded by hordes of what they called crickets. Then, on June 9, 1848, flights of what was termed legions of gulls appeared and saved the farmers from total crop failure. To honor that event the church has since built the large Seagull Monument made of granite and topped with a bronze sculpture of two seagulls measuring eight feet across from wing tip to wing tip.

Here in North Dakota, citizens recalled the Mormon experience when seagulls arrived to their aid in McLean County. On one bird watchers computer site a little bit of reading told me that no such thing as a seagull exists. Instead, the bird we see following the plows is actually a Herring Gull, but it makes little difference to us who liked their company in the field.

This story can be expanded with another name in regards to crops and yields - Norman Borlaug. Miracles aren’t associated with him, just good hard work and an intellectual approach to the problem. In 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his work. Because of his work he is one of only seven people to have received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal in addition to the Nobel Peace Prize. His work resulted in Borlaug being called "the father of the Green Revolution" and is credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.

How did he earn this appellation? In 1944 he joined a joint venture sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture to conduct research and boost wheat production in Mexico. At the time the country was importing much of its grain. He crossed and backcrossed wheat thousands of times to come up with a finished seed.Seeing his success India and Pakistan also invited him to come and assist their farmers. In about twenty years time Mexico became a net exporter of wheat and yields nearly doubled in Pakistan and India.

Maybe the Borlaug story takes this story a bit off the track, but it seemed related. Perhaps we could have added the Biblical story of when the Jews wandered in the desert for forty years and God furnished manna for them to eat.