by Theodore Dalrymple
From the window in my study I can see the bird
table in our small garden. Although I am no ornithologist, I can tell a hawk
from a handsaw, or rather a thrush from a jackdaw, and the behaviour of the
birds amuses me greatly. It sometimes distracts, or perhaps I should say
diverts, me from what I should be doing.
Every morning and evening I put out seeds for
them. We have reached such a state or refinement of consumerism that even seed
mixture sold for the birds is now attractive and even appetising; it looks like
muesli for very small people, and is no doubt fortified with all kinds of
minerals and vitamins. I think there have probably been times in human history
when people were given worse to eat.
Is it really a good thing to feed the birds? Could it make them lazy or incompetent in finding their own provender, so that when through absence or for some other reason we are not able to put out the seeds for them they will be worse off than if we had never assisted them in this way? Are we creating a welfare state for birds, and thereby making them dependent on us?
The table is on a wooden pillar, designed to make it difficult or impossible for rats and squirrels, who are no respecters of human intentions, to climb. On the top there is an arrangement like an open cuckoo clock, except that it is more likely to contain a pigeon than a cuckoo.
The pigeons, it must be confessed, are the major
beneficiaries of our largesse: or at least, one of them is. Pigeons are fat
and, like so many children in Britain an America these days, they do not know
when to stop eating. One of these days one among them – the pigeons, I mean -
is going to get stuck in the bird table’s shelter, just like Pooh in Rabbit’s
door after Pooh had been true to his inner voice: ‘It was just as if somebody
inside him were saying, “Now then, Pooh, time for a little something.”’ For
pigeons, as for Pooh, it is always time for a little something.
There is just room for two pigeons on the bird table
if they co-operated, and this, paradoxically, gives the small birds their
chance. For two pigeons never co-operate and are much more concerned to make
sure that the other pigeon does not get any seed than they get some seed
themselves. Pigeons are greedy, but greed is not their only vice. Envy is
evidently another. And so they chase one another away. It is then that the
small birds get their chance.
Ideally, of course, every pigeon would like a
monopoly of the bird table; but the other bird’s deprivation is more important
to them than their own satisfaction. Pigeons, then, are human, all too human.
They continue their feud in other parts of the garden, chasing their opponents
from whatever perch they find them on. While this is happening, the little birds,
the sparrows, tits and robins, take advantage.
Alas, their time is short. One of the pigeons
usually emerges triumphant, and returns to the table having established his
superiority over his fellow Columbidae. He – for I assume it is a male – then
occupies the table for up to half an hour, his head bobbing up and down like
one of those nodding-donkey oil wells on a plain.
Moreover, when the small birds get their chance,
they do not co-operate among themselves. Although there is plenty of room, if
not for all then for many, they too do not like to see their diminutive
brethren contented or happy, but try to chase them away. I confess that when I
saw this, I thought of the Second Balkan War: Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece,
having defeated their common enemy Turkey in the first such war, then fell out
among themselves and ruined their own economies.
The behaviour of the birds constantly reminds me
of human conduct. For example, the other day a carrion crow landed on the
table. It was large and black, its heavy beak hardly suited to pecking at small
seeds (as inexperienced users of chopsticks cannot pick up a grain of rice),
and for some reason the glossiness of its feathers gave me the impression that
it was highly pleased with itself, like an unctuous Church of England bishop in
the novels of Trollope. It was sitting there complacently when it was suddenly
attacked by a furious male blackbird, much smaller than he but full of moral
indignation. Beak for beak, of course, the crow was much the more powerful, but
he fled before the onslaught. The blackbird then did something rather like a
victory roll in the air above the garden.
His victory was the result of his self-belief: a
combination of anger and awareness of the justice of his cause. For only a few
yards from the table is a wall with some very thick creepers, in which he had
his nest. Carrion crows will eat eggs and take young birds; the blackbird was
fighting for the life of his young, even if the carrion crow would have
disowned any aggressive intention. No, he had come just for the bird-seed; the
blackbird was acting upon prejudice, or species-profiling. He was infringing
the blackbird’s basic ornithological rights. Or, as Mao Tse-Tung might have put
it, the carrion crow is only a paper tiger.
It is surprising how quickly we infuse the
natural world with our human meanings. We anthropomorphise it almost by second
nature. My wife, when she puts out the seed, is often morally disgusted at the
conduct of the pigeons, so fat and well-fed already, so greedy, so indifferent
to the hunger of others, in a word so thoughtless. Moreover, and this is not
the least of it, they seem to defaecate more than any other of the birds, even
allowing for their larger size. They have are gross, they have no delicacy, no
savoir-vivre. The other birds are refined, at least when they are not
squabbling; they have finesse and delicacy. It is true that the sparrows are
not exactly songbirds, having little more than a chirrup in their repertoire;
but it is a jolly sound. The blackbird, when he is not angry, is a fine
songster. The pigeon’s coo is monotonous, utterly lacking in imagination, and
he is apt in any case to make a clumsy clattering sound with his wings. His
landing is always almost a crash-landing; the phrase ‘a bull in a china shop’
cold be replaced by ‘a pigeon in a lilac tree.’ Our lovely lilac is often
damaged by pigeons attempting to sit in it.
Dislike of pigeons is very common (though, in
England, the keeping of pigeons for racing was long a favourite past-time of the
working classes). In fact, they are rather beautiful birds, with fine and
delicate colouring; our dislike of them causes us to neglect their finer
points. It is true that they are not elegantly shaped, and that it is not for
nothing that we use the expression ‘pigeon-toed’ of someone with a certain kind
of inelegant gait; but surely everyone has a right to be judged by his best
qualities and not his worst?
Is it not strange that, while the word pigeon
has so many negative connotations, the word dove has so many positive ones?
You’d think doves do not defaecate, the reputation they have. A dove is a
universal symbol of peace; and it was regarded as a sign from heaven, almost,
when a dove landed on Fidel Castro’s shoulder after one of the first speeches he
gave in public as leader of the Cuban Revolution. It would have been completely
different if the dove had been a pigeon; and just think of what the outrage
would be if, after some ceremony or other supposedly designed to bring about or
pray for world peace, the participants released a whole load of pigeons into
the air instead of doves! They’d be accused of wilfully procuring damage to
public buildings rather than symbolising their desire for a conflict-free
world. No one puts wire netting over stone buildings to keep away the doves;
they put it there to keep away the pigeons.
And yet there is no clear biological difference
or dividing line between pigeons and doves; there is no purely biological
criterion by which to say whether a bird is a pigeon or a dove. It is a
distinction, then, without a difference. Doves, it is true, tend to be smaller
than pigeons; no one would call the pigeons in my garden doves; yet there are
some pigeons that are undoubtedly smaller than some doves, and hence – it
follows logically – there are some doves that are larger than some pigeons. In
other words, the difference between pigeons and doves is not a biological one,
but as our academics would put it, a socially-constructed one.
The strange thing is that I persist in thinking
that I can tell a pigeon from a dove, but this is probably an indication of how
prejudiced a person I am.
Be that all as it may, I do not think that my
observations of bird-behaviour tells me anything about the human world, though
I am so tempted to describe it in human terms. This is not because my
observations are so unsystematic. I do not think that if I made more systematic
observations – for example, if I developed a statistical analysis of aggressive
behaviour inter- and intra-species - I would find anything much more about the
human world. It is as absurd to study man to find out about sparrow-behaviour
as the other way round. One would not conclude from the fact that young men in
my town like to get drunk of Friday nights that sparrows, or even robins, like
to get drunk on their weekends too.
The list of people who have thought that the
examination of the conduct of animals sheds profound light on the human world
is a long one. I remember that, in my days as a student, the studies of Konrad
Lorenz were all the rage, at least until it was discovered, or at least
publicised, that he had been a Nazi. This led to a different, and less
favourable or credulous reading of his book on aggression, though of course
whether what he said in that book was true or not had nothing to do with his
political past.
For quite a long time, when I was a more
frequent reviewer of books than I am now, I used to be sent books on ethology
and evolutionary psychology for review, and many of them were indeed
fascinating. But it seems to me that they shed no light on human life, just as
a rigid Laplacean determinism does not help us to live. When I come to a
T-junction, it may well be that whether I turn left or right has been already
determined by the whole of the previous history of the universe (although it
sounds a bit grandiose to put it like this), but the fact is that, when I come
to the T-junction, I still have to think about whether I am going to turn left
or right. Consultation about the whole of the previous history of the universe
will not help me very much, and indeed would turn me into a kind of Buridan’s
ass.
I do not think it follows from the fact that the
komodo dragon hunts in packs that young British youths in the London Borough of
Streatham – to take an example purely at random – are predetermined thereby to
hunt in packs also. After all, the komodo dragon is a reptile, and Man is not a
reptile: except metaphorically-speaking, of course. I think possibly the most
foolish extrapolation from animals to man that I have ever read was in the
preface that the great ethologist, Robert Trivers, wrote to Richard Dawkins’
book, The Selfish Gene. In that he extrapolated directly from the bees and the
wasps to Man. Oh Man, where is thy sting?
But I shall continue to observe my birds – for
the sake of their intrinsic interest, not to find out how to live.
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