the pigeons and doves and chickens - all families with long discursive and fascinating entries. Another ample entry is that for predators.
How to read a book of this magnitude?
I reckon most of us will immediately look for our favourite families and then forage for novel insights. A word of caution, do not open the book if you don’t have a good stretch of time available in front of you because that short entry you were going to peruse for the Helmetshrike and Bushshrike family (Malaconotidae) species leads you on to another and another. And before you know where the time has gone....
The book is full of narratives, facts and idea both positive and negative. Why are white storks and human fertility permanently paired in the European imagination? A new born baby with red marks on its neck has stork marks caused by the bird’s beak where she carried it; they will fade in a year, so a young mother was told in UK in 1987. . A photograph of a sparrowhawk with deliberately broken wings for sale in a Beijing market as a table delicacy, reminds us of our neglect and cruelty in our treatment of our fellow creatures. Take the Phasianidae, the pheasant, fowl and allies family. This family ranging from finch-sized quail to magnificent peacocks are basically
36 BIRD SCENE
ground dwellers although some do fly. And they all run very fast as any poultry or quail keeper knows.
It is estimated that there are two
chickens for every human on the planet. The sorry tale of the factory farming of the domestic chicken is recounted here. But fowls have also had other uses - therapeutic and symbolic importance. Sacrificing a chicken to Aesculapius, the god of medicine, a habit of the ancient Greeks, draws on the birds’ apparent association with vitality. Throughout most of the world, the cock’s crowing heralds the dawn and the sound is expressed similarly in language. Our cocks sing cockadoodle do, whereas French cocks call cocorico and in Ghana they sing konkolirikoo.
This vitality which can show itself in aggression has been utilised for the practice of cockfighting which supposedly began in the Iron Age. The practice is outlawed in most countries nowadays; in Mexico and the Philippines it still flourishes. Mark Cocker points out that the two years a fighting cock spends cosseted and cherished does not compare that unfavourably with the tortured 6 weeks of broiler chickens’ lives.
Mark Cocker doesn’t fudge facts - our cruelty to, and abuse of birds, the exploitation and harvesting of their
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