Ugly Birds

Compared to the last image I posted, this picture can be enough to make a birder gag. Grackle's and Starling's are synonymous with evil to many a bird watcher, pest, vermin, murderer. Perhaps the most damning, "Invasive Species", with it's high brow tone and suggestion of future controlled eradication, is the one most intellectuals have come to resort to.

Starlings were in fact introduced by a true invasive species, mankind. It was part of one man's ill fated plan to have all of the bird species mentioned in Shakespeare living in Central Park. Starlings were perfectly suited to living in their new environment and did not have many of the checks on their population that would have evolved with them in their native territory.

When we see a "successful" human, we do not automatically despise them unless we see their behavior as reprehensible in some sense. Then their sucess becomes another means for us to put them down and revel in their misfortunes. The starling is absolutely a successful species. It also has a lot of behaviors that our moral code deems negative. It is hard to not make judgements about a bird that will crack open the eggs of competitor species in order to gain their territory. But the starling does not have a moral code about these things, unlike we do. We are taught from childhood that it is not acceptable to kill babies so that our enemies will not be able to reproduce. Starlings are simply programmed to do it, it is part of their survival instincts.

Perhaps asking if a work of art could return to the state of a mere object is like asking if a human being could return to the state of a Homo Erectus. Even if we could raise a child to think, act and look like a primitive human, we would carry within us the image of what that creature could have been, should have been. We would write that creatures humanity on top of its behavior and judge it as we do the starlings of the world.