You need a lot more than six if you want the gold.

[sistermagpie]

Recently, when I was reading The Name of the Rose, I was amused to come across this exchange:

"Have you been told about [St. Francis] preaching to the birds?"

"Oh yes, I've heard that beautiful story, and I admired the saint who enjoyed the company of those tender creatures of God," I said with great fervor.

"Well, what they told you was mistaken, or rather, it's a story the order has revised today. When Francis spoke to the people of the city and its magistrates and saw they didn't understand him, he went out to the cemetery and began preaching to ravens and magpies, to hawks, to raptors feeding on corpses."

"What a horrible thing!” I said. "Then they were not good birds!"

Um, yeah, not "good birds." Unlike the tender creatures of God.

Then I read this article on a Canadian scientist who had tested birds on creativity to create a sort of "Bird I.Q." and put corvids (the magpie/crow/raven/jay) family on the top intelligence-wise that had this quote:

Many of the birds that ranked high on the innovation scale are the least popular with the public.
"When you look at published reports on whether people like birds or don't like birds, they don't correlate well with intelligence," said the McGill researcher.
"People tend not to like crows, because they have this fiendish look to them and they're black and they like dead prey. Warblers and the birds that people tend to like are not the high innovators."

I was slightly less amused.

And now Sporting Shooter Magazine has offered a £500 reward for the farmer who kills the most magpies between now and July because while the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds says that "the justification the magazine gives flies in the face of all that we know to be the real causes of songbird decline. There has been a lot of work done into the reasons and in no case are magpies cited as the main reason for the decline." According to the actual research RSPB has done, it found that the population of songbirds in any given area was determined by availability of food and suitable nesting places and that the number of magpies made no difference to the number." But what's that in the face of the way everybody "knows" that "if you get rid of the magpies you get more songbirds," and the fact that the guy with the contributing editor has estimated they kill 80 songbirds a year. Because if there's one thing we've learned from history, it's that old wives tales and anecdotal evidence are totally more reliable than actual experiments.

I just can't help but wonder what it is about human nature to attach all these bad qualities to smarter birds as opposed to the pretty ones with prettier songs. I mean, isn't it logical to think that in an environment where food is limited you're naturally going to get more corvids because they're more adaptable and have many food sources? Then there's also this hatred of carrion eaters, which is especially ironic when you imagine people murdering each other and then calling the birds evil for cleaning up after them. Disgusting things. And what's with the black feathers? Don't they know that's evil?

I note that not one person in this article who's so horrified by declining songbird populations mentions anything about people possibly having anything to do with it. It's more like, "Dammit, we've destroyed the environment to make it the way we like it, and it's not fair that these disgusting things are able to survive better than the birds I like. I couldn't have killed off the sparrows--I LIKE sparrows! It must be those damn magpies. I see them up there on the phone wires, plotting, looking for songbird nests to destroy."

Wolves have to put up with this kind of thing too. (I remember one quote where someone said the wolf was "the Saddam Hussein" of the animal world. Right.) Bastards.

Also

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Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yes, magpies are very lucky and joyful in some Asian countries. I think their name in some Asian languages mean "happy sparrow" and "winning crow."

I have to admit I got upset just reading the description of that book that Sam linked to--and I notice that of course in that book the magpies and crows are thuggish and the robins and other animals are more noble.

Corvidae, the Slytherins of the bird world!

[slinkhard.livejournal.com]

As if any animals have nobility.

Heh, exactly.

[samaranth.livejournal.com]

*wah* - I didn't mean to upset you!

(I did the biggest 'oh tut' noise when I saw it in the bookshop.)

[adrienneherbst.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to comment so late, but I just came across this and I was upset reading that book summary too-- not only because of the way it cast the bird species, although that was horrid-- but because of the creepy racist/genocide plot that seems to be such an awful staple of fantasy books. It immediately, and in a probably ridiculously paranoid way, reminded me of Yellow Peril pamphlets from the late 1800's-- they've got filthy habits, no morals, and they're breeding fast! they're going to take over! etc etc, and this book seems to have it all, right down to the sexual violence committed against non-invader women (bird rape scenes? does this man have his bird anatomy down I wonder?). I'm not sure if this phenomenon represents an honest fear on the part of the bigoted population that they're going to be phased out of their evolutionary/economic or what (it would make sense with fear of intelligent scavenger birds), but it disturbs me that it's still a highly popular narrative form, even if it's more popular in fantasy than political propaganda (The wolf ad from last year's election has nothing on Willie Horton). This One for Sorrow book is apparently a best-seller even though it sounds basically like a a vile rehash of the "Redwall" books; Peter Jackson felt the need to alter Tolkien's storyline to fit the genocide plot too. Brrr.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I hadn't even thought about it like that but ITA. It's not even like something like Watership Down that deals with animals fighting over territory or establishing a warren. It's like just taking the idea of genocide and made it okay because it's birds.

It's quite unfair to the birds, really. I mean, the point of nature is they aren't really stupid enough to want to kill an entire race of birds intentionally--they don't think in those terms. And then giving them these particular human attitudes etc., it's very strange and makes you wonder why people need to tell this story over and over nowadays. Sometimes it seems like it's just an easy way to recognize a villain, like it's the only thing you can get people to automatically understand is very very bad and scary.