View From The Shed by Volunteer Shaun - A Tail's Tale

A TAIL’S TALE

Imagine, if you will, a world where humans have evolved to be more like birds. We have amended our body parts to be more like them. Arms become wings. Larynx becomes pharynx. Mouth and nose become beak. Legs stay pretty much like legs though, just the two of them for walking and jumping around. We wouldn’t want to change too much in one go.

Imagine that we made all these amendments and many more. We’d be so much different to the humans of 2025 but we still wouldn’t be birds because you and I lack one major body part that birds absolutely must have. Before you start guessing and this blog takes a major turn into NSFW territories, I’ll tell you. The title at the top of the page should have been a huge clue anyhow.

 We can never imagine what it’s really like to be a bird because we have nothing even vaguely resembling a tail. A bird’s tail is vital to its very being. Without one it would be a very poor bird indeed. Whether it be short and stubby (like a Wren) or huge and colourful (like a Turkey) each bird has precisely the kind of tail that it needs for its own particular lifestyle, and each bird’s tail is used for a multitude of reasons. Such as…

• Steering - Watch the V of a Red Kite’s tail or a Kestrel’s when it’s fanned out. They’re in permanent movement to keep the bird in the exact part of its 3D world that it wants to be. These are extreme examples but it’s the same for every flying bird. Think about the moving parts of an aeroplane’s tail. The side to side and up and down movements of those ailerons and rudders mimic the infinitely subtler and instinctive twitching of a bird’s tail. Anyone who knows anything about flight knows about lift and drag. I don’t know how any of this works but I do know that it’s essential to take them into consideration when flying and landing safely. A pilot must concentrate intensely when trimming these bits of the tail for landing. A bird does it without even thinking. Give that a thought next time you see a bird drop effortlessly onto a branch or indeed next time you start dropping towards a runway.
• Braking - Spreading the tail feathers or using them to ‘catch’ the air slows a bird down for landing or avoiding predators, sometimes really abruptly. Again, watch how difficult it is for an aeroplane to stop. Birds like Old Moor’s resident Peregrines can plummet from great heights at well over a hundred miles an hour and yet land much more gracefully than any 747.
• Display - Many birds use their tails to attract potential mates and to show competitors that they aren’t to be messed with. The Peacock is a prime example of this when it fans its huge tail out and shakes it so that the ‘eye’ markings shimmer, but the tail display is no less crucial in our own garden birds. I love how Blackbirds flick their tails in an aggressive manner at another Blackbird. Actually, they’ll flick at almost anything that moves including me, usually accompanied by a confrontational chattering that can only mean, “This is my patch, move along if you know what’s good for you”. Even the curly tails of a Mallard are notable to others of their kind. Is one tight curly feather particularly impressive or is it the number of them that makes it attractive? I honestly don’t know but the important thing is that they do. 
• Balance - Look at how a bird perches on a branch. Occasionally, especially when it’s just landed and is settling down, it will move its tail to help balance, just like a cat does when on a small surface. These adjustment movements may be small but they’re incredibly important. A bird that can’t balance is very quickly going to become someone’s dinner.
• Bracing - Birds that land upright on a tree’s trunk such as Treecreepers or Woodpeckers use their short, stiff tail feathers to brace themselves against the (relatively) flat surface. The toes grip tightly but the tail is an added tool to keep it in place while it searches amongst the bark for food.

Taking all this into consideration, it’s imperative that these tail feathers are kept in prime condition at all times. This involves pulling each feather through the beak from the root to the tip to remove any dirt and align each individual filament with its neighbours. Preening is essential for good flight and display. Who’d want to raise chicks with a bird who didn’t care about their appearance? 

You know how I love words and how they come to be used, right? Well the posh and technical word for a tail feather is a rectrix; the plural is rectrices. If we take a look at our Latin dictionaries (and isn’t it always eventually going back to the Latin?) rectrix is the female form of the word rector which means “one who directs or steers”, such as the helmsman of a boat. So the tail feathers basically steer the bird. Whoever came up with that one, I salute you, it’s excellent.

So I do not have a tail like a bird has. Looking at the list of ways that they use it, there’s no point in me having one. I don’t fly and my ‘displaying to attract a mate’ days are well and truly over. I don’t need a multi-use tail but to each and every bird, it’s absolutely essential.