For Whom Do You Cheer

Ever see a Peregrine Falcon swoop low across the mud flats and scare a flock of shorebirds into flight?  More often than not when I have seen this behavior in the company of birding friends, the others cheer when the Peregrine comes up empty.  Not me. 

I am no sadist.  I do not revel at horror movies.  I have no relatives who are vampires.  I simply appreciate the equations of nature dealing with energy intake and survival.  Namely, things have to eat to survive.  A Peregrine Falcon’s food sources include shorebirds. 

      After all, shorebirds eat, especially lots of invertebrates.  Who cheers for the worms that got away?  Who cheers for the mosquito larvae that wiggled out of the grasp of a Least Sandpiper?  I know what you’re thinking: worms and mosquitos – eewwww.   It doesn’t matter.  Live things are alive because other things used to be, but aren’t any more. 

I’m not sure if it’s something about wanting the underdog to win or an aversion to death, but lots to people seem to cheer for prey when predators are around.  In the philosophical treatise on birding “Life in the Sky with Wings,” author Jonathan Rosen substantiates this preference for prey eluding predators.  On page 144, Rosen describes accompanying a falconer who uses a pair of Harris’ Hawks to capture partridges:

…the partridge was in the shadow when I finally noticed it.  The bird was beautifully marked with black shadow lines – the whole bird looked like a painted face.  The hawks were both ten feet or so up, but they had not yet noticed the partridge.  The partridge, however, was aware of the hawks, and seemed frozen with fear I felt I could reach out and pick the bird up with my bare hands… Standing with the petrified bird at my feet and the dark raptors above, I felt not the murderous rapture I had hoped to experience in some perverse way, but a kind of bored impatience and a bit of shame.  This was not what I wanted.  My sympathy was with the partridge.

                My sympathy lies with the predator.  Watching the death part of the circle of life and death helps me feel connected to nature in all its fullness.  When a raptor stoops on avian prey, but misses, the circle of life and death is not a closed loop.  It’s like an open electrical circuit, and the current of life cannot proceed. 

               I guess cheering for either the predator or the prey is a little weird anyway.  Despite the fact that I firmly believe humans are an integral part of nature, the notion of cheering for either the falcon or the shorebird seems like I am wishing I could truly be a part of nature, but feeling at that moment like I am relegated to standing on the sidelines.

                Next time you see a Peregrine Falcon swoop across a mud flat filled with shorebirds, for whom will you cheer?

         Go bird!