The average person who ventures out into the countryside does not know a vulture from a hawk from a falcon from a parrot -- they all have hooked beaks and claws, don't they?
But what makes a vulture or hawk or parrot is not what it LOOKS like, but what it does.
Only a Redtail Hawk can do what a Redtail Hawk does -- it is a unique animal in its world.
A vulture cannot catch a single living animal, and is only interested in the dead.
A Redtail Hawk, however, can snatch a running rabbit off a wooded and snowy bank with a 20-mile wind off its shoulder.
A Redtail is a killing machine.
No other hawk can do exactly what a Redtail does, while no other falcon can do what a Peregrine does in the high plains of Montana.
Each is an animal made for its work, and its quarry, and its place in this world.
But suppose we were to take all the Redtail Hawks and put them in an aviary where they never had to catch their own food?
Suppose that instead of respecting the birds and the process that made them, we bred only the prettiest and most docile bird to only the prettiest and most docile bird, and we did that for 200 years like we have done with white lab rats?
What would we get in the end?
Not a Redtail Hawk!
No, what we would have is a transvestite. It would no more be a hawk than a hummingbird, no matter what it looked like.
And it would have no place in the world outside of the aviary.
Isn't that what has happened to working dogs?
Look at the Kennel Club Cocker Spaniel, Fox Terrrier, Scotties, and Afghan dog.
Look at the Kennel Club German Shepherd, Border Terrier, and Welsh Terrier.
Are they not, to paraphrase Reverand John Russell, "hot house" dogs as different from a true working terrier as the garden rose from "the wild eglantine"?
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| The Wild Eglantine |
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2 comments:
200 years? I think about a tenth of that is likely to have an impact.
http://www.sibfox.com/
It's always bothered me, as we rescue unwanted parrots, that breeders don't seem to even have temperament on the list. In fact, it's most often the neurotic, aggressive and unstable birds get turned into aviaries and earn their living by breeding. The really docile parrots get kept as individual pets. Subsequently, parrot behaviour is getting more extreme by the day.
Until today I'd only seen crows worrying hawks out of the area. Today, it was crows vs. a bald eagle. 10 crows hassled the crap out of the eagle as he flew slightly above tree-top level. It was incredible and struck me as pretty ballsy since they worked the eagle one at a time. Later we had a Canada Goose lounging alone on our barn lawn, and I saw a fox trot past as I was bringing horses in from pasture. I dunno, there was something in the air today!
Seahorse
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