Aside from groups engaging in”bird watchers”), most contemporary humans go about their busy, self-absorbed, lifetimes on Terra Firma paying scant attention to their earthly airborne co-tenants. In our experience, the average lawnmowing, auto driving, commuting to work,, television viewing, hamburger consuming, coffee-drinking, member of the fraternity-sorority, referred to as “homo sapiens,” seem to perceive birds as merely and uninterestingly, part of the Planet’s natural environment like the wind and weather. Notably, their evolutionary, meat-eating amphibious ancestors, in their era, by existential contrast, warranted vital scrutiny and life-preserving diligence.
For the non-geological-evolutionary scientist, it requires a veritable “leap of faith,” to accept the notion that the little English sparrow, the tiny Black-Capped Chickadee, and the Goldfinch are the temporal evolutionary progeny of the Brontosaurus and the toothy Tyrannus Rex. Aside from the class of birds denominated as Raptors (“Hawks”), most of the unassuming avian inhabitants of the sky and Earth are content with a diet of insects, seeds, or floral nectar.
Contrary to their universally indifferent perception as simply, flying multi-colored fauna, birds, in fact, seem to perform the important role of reseeding the planet’s flora, reducing the impact of the planet’s overabundant population of annoying, and often toxic, insect population, providing a source of nutrition (ex, chickens and their eggs, turkeys, pheasants, pigeons), cultural ornaments for Indigenous peoples and women’s hats, quills for writing, mattress and pillow stuffing among other applications; and a plethora of referential vocabulary, viz., “bird-brained,” “chicken-hearted,” “chicken,” “eagle-eyed,” on the wing” “flight pattern” “crow’s feet,” “wing and a prayer,” “feather-nesting,” “egg head,” “feather-light,” “aviator,” flight pattern,” “nest egg,” “roost,” flock,” bill and coo,” “sitting ducks,” “turkey-necked,” “eagle eye,””alight,” “swoop down,” and others.; demonstrating that, contrary to the assumption that birds are out of mind, their presence, notably, in our analogous thoughts;
We would observe that birds have territorial assumptions but do not make internecine nor, interspecies wars, seem to share a common interest in food and a healthy environment, are musical and acrobatic, socially gregarious, unanimous in their decision-making regarding food sources and climate, seasonally flexible and adaptive, socially egalitarian, domestic and family oriented, practical and not delusional, and usefully and empirically motivated by considerations of natural survival viz., food, weather, and procreation.
In moments of deep and disappointed rumination concerning the unnatural and perverse condition of contemporary mankind’s casual respect for morality, avarice, and its populously singular ignorance, we unwittingly are struck with the bizarre question as to whether the birds might possibly be watching Mankind, from on high, us for a possible change (analogous to their own evolutionary transmogrification from Tyrannus Rex to black-capped chickadee,) to something universally peaceable and acceptably multi-societal.
-p.
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