4 the Birds!!!

Remember Tippi Hedren riding into town in her sporty convertable wearing a silver mink and a distant look. The last thing she was thinking about is the towns bird population. By the time Hitchcock was through with her, we never looked at birds the same. The past couple of weeks have left me feeling a little bit like Tippi minus the fur, flash car, and beak bites.

Since I moved back to the big city(Seattle) from the small town I was living in(Tumwater), I have been attacked by birds, or so it seems. They are everywhere! on the ground, in the are, on the roof, on my CAR!! Every morning at 5am I here a symphony of birds outside my window on my neighbors roof. When I lived in Tumwater, a woodpecker would drill on my roof around the same time but I expected it out in the burbs. The urbanite in me wants to figure out a way to get rid of them ,however the environmentalist in me is starting to find them fascinating. Birds are probably the most visible wildlife species in urban environments. Humans seem to have a love hate relationship with birds. On the one hand we admire their physical beauty and ability to fly(who doesn't want to sprout wings and take off), on the other hand we mock their intelligence and hunt them for sport. Culturally we have decided birds should live in freedom and in the wilds of nature in the woods or on some protected land designated for wildlife habitat. The thought of a urban neighborhood as a wildlife sanctuary for birds to thrive in may seem revolutionary to some, but recent studies of city birds and rural birds are finding that city birds may have better survival skills than their rural kin. These skills may help them adjust to climate change and make them better candidates for natural selection in the future. Studies are showing that birds raised in urban environments are starting to develop biological resistances to noise and air pollution. They also seem to deal with physical stress much better than rural birds. Some scientist call birds 'feathered dinosaur's' and predict the urban species are going to be the ones that survive extinction. The ones who do will be in spite of us humans. Ornithophobia seems to be particularly high in cities, a fact Hitchcock exploited masterfully. People in cities feel more comfortable dealing with domestic birds in cages than wildlife in the streets. Unfortunately, most urbanites only notice birds when they are in their trash or pooping on their windshield, or as Rachel Carson pointed out, when they are extinct. My research is making more aware of birds and how they coexist in my city environment. Crows and pigeons are transforming from pests that need eradication, to noisy neighbors who have squatting rights like anybody else.