Bird Behaviour and Human Reactions

      I can't begin to recount the number of times people have made comments to me about bird behaviour they perceive as less than desirable, always applying anthropocentric judgements about it, of course. Why we constantly seek to impose human values on other animals, and assume that their motivations are the same as ours, is difficult to fathom.

     Usually an observation of this nature rolls off me like the proverbial water off a duck's back, but every so often it really irritates me. A while ago, on a bird walk I led, one of the participants was constantly informing me why she liked certain birds and didn't like others. Predictably the ones she liked were small and cute, the ones she didn't bold and brassy, and ominously perhaps, most of them were black. She loved raptors if they took loathsome animals like rats or snakes, but detested them if they captured song birds. 

     Birds are driven by their impulses to survive and feed their young. They do not make choices to randomly kill and are motivated to do so only by hunger. 

     It is paradoxical that many admire the skill of an Osprey (Pandion haliaeetus) when it plunges into the water to catch a fish, perhaps because the fish is wriggly and slimy, but detest a Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) picking off a Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus). And god forbid that the falcon should take someone's homing pigeon!

Western Osprey with young

Peregrine Falcon

     A Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) is an unwelcome guest at many bird feeders since it is considered pushy, and out-competes other species. Can we not simply accept that it is implementing its best survival skills? In fact, if it is taking good care of young in the nest, it is exhibiting the qualities we most admire in humans - taking care of one's children.

Blue Jay

     

     And should that Blue Jay drop down from the feeder to snatch up a beetle it immediately merits applause!

     Much is made of species, such as a Blue Jay for example, that eat the young of others given the chance. People view this behaviour as the worst travesty one might imagine. And this reaction from humans who routinely eat lamb chops, veal and chicken! 

     Before Homo sapiens slaughtered the last wild Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius), ironically the most numerous bird ever to grace the skies, the favourite food items were the plump squabs in the nest. They were shaken out of their nests, knocked down with sticks, induced to leave the nest by setting fires beneath them - any means was fair game to kill them. And it was not for subsistence only that they were deprived of life. They were salted down and shipped in barrels to far away markets in growing cities. Defenseless babes in the nest were fair game for the time-honoured human capacity to kill.

Passenger Pigeon (picture from the internet)

     And kill we do - on and on, each other and every other creature that moves. We willingly turn on our fellow humans if we don't share the same religion, or even different interpretations of the same religion,  founded on the same holy text - think of Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland and Sunni and Shia in Iraq. Religious leaders issue directives to the faithful to kill others as a duty. 

     Christians are told, "Thou shalt not kill", unless the state sends you to war that is, and orders you to kill; trains you so that you can do it well. But if you desert because you cannot stomach it, they will kill you for refusing to kill others.

     There is a famous and oft recounted incident in World War I, in 1915, when German and British soldiers ceased their hostilities at Christmas and walked over from their trenches to shake hands with each other, and even played a friendly game of soccer. Humans meeting humans in tranquil greeting. The next morning they merrily resumed massacring each other.

     Birds do none of this! Birds kill only to secure food and not beyond what they (and their young) can consume. There is no blood lust; there is nothing untoward about their actions. In fact they play a critical role in regulating populations of other species. Try to imagine a world overrun with rodents if birds of prey (and animals such as foxes and coyotes) were not there to keep the rodents in check.

     The other diatribe I am frequently subjected to is about the droppings of Canada Geese (Branta canadensis). Having done everything possible to lay out a carpet of their favourite food, grass, we then complain about them eating it? We are surprised? And what goes in must come out.

Canada Goose with young

     I can tell you this. There have been problems in parks during this year of COVID when washrooms have been closed, and I know which poop I would prefer to deal with!

     So please, let's have no more of this pointless and unreasonable assignment of human values to birds. It makes no sense, and humans come out looking bad every time.