The Aristocrats

The Aristocrats?  No, no, nothing to do with that joke, though it might be useful to keep it somewhere in the back of your mind as you read this.

In the photo-collages I have made so far, crows and other members of that family have played the most prominent part.  I like crows.  I think of them as adaptable survivors, ubiquitous yet characterful, quarrelsome yet loyal to the tribe, aggressive yet intelligent and curious, far from pretty but endowed with a certain scruffy dignity.  They also seem to carry a feeling of responsibility towards bird-life in general, acting as a spontaneous militia: let a predatory buzzard or hawk appear in the sky, and a squadron of crows, rooks and even jackdaws will scramble to harass it until it glides off to some other, less populated neck of the woods.  Needless to say, I grew up among crows.

But I also admire those aloof birds of prey, coolly shrugging off pecks and feints, and effortlessly riding higher and higher into the sky, all the time watching the ground with super-power vision.  Part of me identifies just as strongly with them.  That's OK: humans are nothing if not shape-shifters.  You can be a quarrelsome crow at breakfast, a soaring eagle at work, and a lovey dovey at night, or whatever else you happen to be like.  We have looked to birds and animals for our metaphors and spirit-guides since the last Ice Age and probably before.  Wardrobe providers, too.  As far as I know, it has never occurred to any other species of predator not only to eat other creatures, but also to remove their hides, fur, bones and feathers and wear them, which I suppose is us taking our metaphorical tendency to its most practical extreme.  "It's so cold... I wish we could be as warm as furry bears!", sighs Ug's bed-partner, for whom nothing is too much trouble.  "And this straw is all scratchy!"  Hmm, thinks Ug.  Furry bears.  I may have an idea...

Presentation of the "More Mice" park plan...

Raptors are the aristocrats of the food chain.  You can't go around eating others as a way of life -- literally or metaphorically -- unless (a) you're very good at it, and (b) there aren't very many of you.  Not until you're clever enough to invent farming, anyway.  Life at the top requires tact, breeding, leisure, and an unfailing instinct to go for the throat.  Killers have to be smarter than their prey and, for some reason, tend to be prettier.  It's an attractive package.  There are few things as memorable or as thrilling as a close encounter with one of these elusive cut-throats, like the brush-by with a sparrow-hawk I had recently, as she jetted through the wood like a relentless heat-seeking missile.

But, closer up, there is something mad and bad about all out-and-out predators, and especially birds of prey.  You can see it in their eyes, that cold black-hole vacancy, checking you out -- threat, no-threat, or dinner?   Their very prettiness and neat-as-a-pin-ness betrays something neurotic; they're twitchy and highly-strung, like gunslingers.  Perhaps, like human hunters, they have obsessive magic routines and rituals that invoke good fortune, and won't venture out if the omens are bad?  And, despite their sleek outfits and superior airs, their nests and perches are stinking charnel-houses, and although they're lethal they will never risk an injury, or waste energy on less than certain kills.  Crows know this, and despise them for it.  Crows take their knocks, and eat any damn thing that comes along.  Hawks?  I've shat 'em!  Raptors, on the other hand, know that crows taste bad and merely talk a good fight; why be concerned by those blowhards and their vulgar abuse?

So, just for a little balance, expect hawks, falcons and eagles to figure more prominently for a while in these posts.  Even a crow can give those arrogant, preening, chick-killin' bastards their due.