View From The Shed by Shaun Finnie - HOW DOES IT FEEL

HOW DOES IT FEEL

How has your week been? Good, I hope. Healthy, at least. If not, then you have my sympathy and my best wishes for the future.

That's what we do, isn't it? We wish each other well. We hope that good things happen to people we like. We feel sad when things don't work out as we'd hoped for our loved ones and might even put our own lives on hold to help others who are in need. Sympathy. Empathy. Altruism. Many would say that these feelings and the actions to which they lead represent the best of humanity.

But birds cannot afford these emotions. In order to survive, birds have to behave in a way that we humans might think of as 'selfish'. If one member of a flock of Starlings is taken by a predator, the rest of them don't think, “Oh poor Basil, he'll be sadly missed. We'll raise a glass in his honour tonight and tell stories about how lovely he was.” If they feel anything at all in the way that we understand it (which is unlikely), they would feel relief that it was Basil who was chosen as the predator's lunch and not themselves. Not that they have enough of a concept of individuality to give each other names.

There is no way that a bird would leave any food out for the worms, the same worms that they'd happily devour and feed to their kids, yet many of us leave out seeds for the birds, and if a Pheasant or Grouse were to eat it, all would be well. And yet, some of us would happily select these self-same birds from a restaurant menu. In the bird world, that would be madness – if madness was a concept that they could understand.

The truth is that Mr and Mrs Starling and their feathery cousins have just one main driver for their entire existence; survival and the passing of their genes to the next generation. Things like kindness, cruelty, envy and humour are not in their metaphorical vocabulary. They simply don't express or even have comprehension of any of these emotions. In fact, their total thought process can be summed up as follows:

Eating

Hunting prey, digging seeds out of pine cones or thistle heads – it all comes down to the same thing. A bird has to get energy to do everything else it needs;

Flight

Sometimes a bird takes to the wing to escape from predators. Sometimes those same predators fly to hunt. Sometimes flight is just moving from place to place finding food or a safe place to rest; Talking of which...

Rest

We all need to recharge our batteries. A bird will either find someplace that it hopes is safe from trouble, or it will trust in the old maxim about safety in numbers;

Cleanliness

Preening, washing, pooping – a bird has to keep itself in tip-top condition if it's to make it through the day and night, let alone an entire season;

Awareness of and response to outside stimuli

Can I feed or sleep in this particular place without fear of being eaten? Will the other birds around me find me a threat to their territory? Are they trespassing on my own territory? Birds are always on the lookout. There's potential danger around every corner.

Apart from a few other things to do with the creation and raising of Starlinglings (I might copyright that word), that's about it; that's a Starling's total existence summed up in just a few words. Most other birds' lives are the same. Now think about all the things that you've done already today. How many of them just wouldn't be conceivable as part of the average small bird's lifestyle? Watching breakfast TV. Scrolling through a few videos of cute kittens. Listening to the Ken Bruce quiz on the radio. A bird doesn't have time to waste on such fun. Birds have no concept of entertainment. You won't find them voting for the best boomer on 'Bittern's Got Talent' or secretly reading 'Fluffy Chicks' magazine. Their life is, literally, too short.

So is it better or worse to think like a human or think like a bird? The answer is, of course, that it depends on which of the two you are. We have made our human lives incredibly complex, full of moral and emotional choices every day, and that works for us. But wouldn't it be good to simplify things down to the level of a bird, even for one day?