124 - The Birds We’ve Wrongly Decided Are Villains

I wanted to talk about birds that we've quietly decided are villains.

They tend to be hawks, owls, vultures, shrikes, crows, and it makes the case that there's no such thing.

Not one of them is a villain.

They're not enemies, they're not bullies, and they get, um... out of being people's favorite birds because they're doing a job the ecosystem actually needs to have done.

We're going to go through it a little bit, bird by bird, through what that job actually is and why it looks like what they're doing may seem sinister, but it's not actually.

What happens when we forget that this place that these birds are doing actually helps make everything in the environment better? So here's the thing about calling an animal of any animal kind a villain.

It's a story that we tell ourselves, and it's something that the animal is just doing based on its own instincts.

A hawk doesn't experience malice when it takes out a sparrow in your feeder.

It experiences hunger.

It has babies to feed, and it does the same thing that you do three times a day.

And we don't call out ourselves as villains for eating a sandwich.

But because we get emotionally attached to smaller, prettier birds at our feeder, the chickadees and the finches and the cardinals, the birds that get to eat them get cast as a bad guy in the story.

But it's just the story that really exists in our head.

I mean, my friend saw it yesterday.

that a morning dove that was on one of her feeders got taken out by a hawk.

And it's not even just feeder birds.

It's about how we react differently to a hawk taking a small bird rather than the chickadee eating a caterpillar.

Both are predators.

They're both killing one animal to live.

But it happens on a scale that we find charming, and another one that's on a scale that we find upsetting.

And so that line really doesn't have much to do with biology.

It's just about which animal we've decided to root for.

And the instinct isn't wrong, by the way.

You know, I feel this way, too.

It's human to root for the underdog or the cute bird, the finch at the bird feeder.

I wanted to talk about birds that we've quietly decided are villains.

They tend to be hawks, owls, vultures, shrikes, crows, and it makes the case that there's no such thing.

Not one of them is a villain.

They're not enemies, they're not bullies, and they get, um... out of being people's favorite birds because they're doing a job the ecosystem actually needs to have done.

We're going to go through it a little bit, bird by bird, through what that job actually is and why it looks like what they're doing may seem sinister, but it's not actually.

What happens when we forget that this place that these birds are doing actually helps make everything in the environment better? So here's the thing about calling an animal of any animal kind a villain.

It's a story that we tell ourselves, and it's something that the animal is just doing based on its own instincts.

A hawk doesn't experience malice when it takes out a sparrow in your feeder.

It experiences hunger.

It has babies to feed, and it does the same thing that you do three times a day.

And we don't call out ourselves as villains for eating a sandwich.

But because we get emotionally attached to smaller, prettier birds at our feeder, the chickadees and the finches and the cardinals, the birds that get to eat them get cast as a bad guy in the story.

But it's just the story that really exists in our head.

I mean, my friend saw it yesterday.

that a morning dove that was on one of her feeders got taken out by a hawk.

And it's not even just feeder birds.

It's about how we react differently to a hawk taking a small bird rather than the chickadee eating a caterpillar.

Both are predators.

They're both killing one animal to live.

But it happens on a scale that we find charming, and another one that's on a scale that we find upsetting.

And so that line really doesn't have much to do with biology.

It's just about which animal we've decided to root for.

And the instinct isn't wrong, by the way.

You know, I feel this way, too.

It's human to root for the underdog or the cute bird, the finch at the bird feeder.