It may help to let them know that picking flowers like that helps cut the seed numbers. More picking is better, (except for the Bittersweet problem).
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Everyone needs to see the faces of 4yo children when they learn that humans are animals too.
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Hikes/walks - for those who like to count steps/miles or are in a hurry to get somewhere. I was already good at that as a toddler, driving my grandma nuts by stopping at every bug on a flower along the way. Some friends/family will by now tell me already before we hit the trail “no pictures, please” and all I do is laugh at that. Don’t want to spend three hours for half a mile? Don’t invite me to your walk! It’s ok to go ahead and I’ll catch up - eventually. Easier if we have two cars at the parking lot so you don’t have to wait on me. I don’t measure my outings in steps or miles but in observations/species recorded. 
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Welcome to the forums, hope you enjoy it as much as many of us. (we don’t call ourselves addicts, we just pretend we are something else)
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Haha - About that age, I remember the day I was told I was a human “bean” (being). I puzzled out that inside, where I could not see, I was somehow really a giant lima bean.
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I remember when my brother was a kid, and I told him that birds are really dinosaurs. His reply: “The only kind of bird that’s a dinosaur is the pterodactyl.”
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I don’t know that I have ruined anything for my friends, but I can say what was ruined for me. My favorite books when I was a kid were the ones full of pictures of tropical rainforest biota. I had this notion that tropical rainforests were like the Garden of Eden. Some of the pictures were of rainforest Native people, who, for obvious reasons, reminded me of Adam and Eve. I imagined that theirs must be a paradisiacal life.
At some point, I began learning about horrible things like malaria and yellow fever. That caused me cognitive dissonance for a while – how could the Garden of Eden contain such horrors?
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You can’t go wrong with ‘enthusiast’. It’s the perfect word to cover so many obsessions.
(“Are you going to finish those potato chips?” he asked, enthusiastically.)
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On our recent trip to Ireland, my friend was quite taken by the many, many Fuschia plants one sees along the roadsides. I had to break it to her that they were not native.
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Well, I guess I’ve tarnished (not ruined) clean energy for some by passing on reports the solar and wind power are harmful to bats and birds.
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Well yes, solar and wind aren’t perfect. They need a lot of space and their construction could mean the clearing the local environment. However, compared to coal or oil, I don’t see wind or solar energy being as harmful to environment. Their impact is localized unlike climate change.
It should also be noted that windows and artificial light can also cause harm to birds and bats. Yet, those inventions aren’t penalized by the mainstream.
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Their imact isn’t localized, just check how solar panels are made and from which materials and where you get those materials from.
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I doubt any of our energy options are without drawbacks. Putting solar panels over parking lots and on the millions of acres of overgrazed, trashed lands would, I think, have benefits that probably outweigh the environmental costs associated with mining needed minerals.
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One hidden impact for most energy sources, clean or dirty, is concrete production per this article. Not sure how to get around this whether it’s in the solar panel factory flooring, a windmill’s foundation, hydroelectric dam.
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I’m from England, and I love starlings, didn’t know that Americans loath them XD
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It’s funny, I absolutely hate Garlic Mustard (a major invasive here in the US) - but then I visited Europe in spring and saw some small stands of Garlic Mustard in the forest in its native environment and pretty soon started loving it there. Came back to the US and now I hate it again…
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We ruin the mirage that birds sleep in nests, like comfy little beds. People are often surprised to learn that nests are for laying eggs (if a nest is used at all; we’re looking at you Killdeer who layed eggs on the walking path) and raising hatchlings and become filled with food waste, bird waste, mites, etc.
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I think I can relate with ‘hating’ species that are in the wrong place, tbh our species is to blame. 
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There’s a mama cat and a papa cat… and sometimes another papa cat, and another papa cat, and so on. That’s why kittens from a single litter often look so different from one another and why there’s sometimes a size discrepancy between them.
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I was told the eggs aren’t released until after mating, and mating several times, releasing another egg or so… yes, many half siblings!
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