Man, you haven’t been scolded until eight, or was it nine, chickadees light into you first thing in the morning. The feeder was full, the neighbour`s cat was still sleeping and the morning jogger and her dog were well out of sight, so I had no idea what was upsetting the little birds. When they calmed down a little, I learned that the little black-capped fellows had heard the news about the whiskey jack being nominated for our national bird.
I did not tell them my choice was the raven but tried to explain the process the National Geographic had used to find their choice for bird of the country. Learned birdwatchers had written many reasons why they wanted a certain bird to be the country’s designated flyer. Then they voted. No, I assured them, it was not a referendum by all the people, but just a selected few who had an interest in picking the national bird. Rather like the few who voted for a proportional voting system in Prince Edward Island (and now the rest are complaining).
The process, I said, was somewhat like the method of voting in the old days in England when only the educated and gentry could cast a vote. Because, it was deemed by the rulers, only they knew enough to make good decisions. I was not certain who had charged the National Geographic people with this exercise, but had to admit it did smack of allowing only the elite readers of the magazine to vote. One of the birds, I think it was a female, wanted to chirp about the emblem being a male or female, but I distracted her with a sunflower seed. Thinking about it, I realized that the Geo people had picked birds where the plumage is almost the same in both sexes. Sort of like Canada – bland, nondescript, inoffensive, able to fit in anywhere.
No, I said, they did not use any proportional system, a shame I agreed, because certainly, the chickadee would have collected more second place weighted votes than any other of the nominees. The Snowy Owl might have given the little guys a run for it but one does not mention the O word around the feeder. The Common loon is a snowbird and simply did not qualify. Besides, they already get enough attention. At 72 cents American, I did not want to think about that before I had a jolt of java.
One of the older chickadees said he thought the election was rigged. The whiskey jack was up to his old tricks. The birds knew all about his exploits when the jay turned into the Trickster and fooled people, or on good days, helped them in times of trouble. The thing was, they said, you never knew if wisakedjak was serious or just kidding around. Sort of like our politicians, they told me.
Another complaint they had was that of name recognition. The whiskey jack or grey jay is also known as the Canada jay. They were certain that some people, those geographers who didn`t know their birds, would choose wisakedjak just because it had Canada in its name. I admitted name recognition likely did play into the vote. Look at all the unknown names running for the Conservative party- how could you pick one over another? On the other hand, some likely thought it was the bird on the Toronto baseball team sweaters.
Anyway, the scolding ended when the neighbour`s cat came out and did its morning stretches on the deck. I assured the chickadees that I would make some effort to have the competition opened to the general public and maybe have a national vote on this important issue. They are suspicious of voting systems but when I said people could tweet their selection that seemed to satisfy them. I mean, if the President-elect in the States can run things by tweeting surely we could select our national bird the same way . . . just saying.
P.S. One little guy came back, tapping on my window. He wanted to know if we had a Provincial bird. I said, yep, we have one – it’s an ostrich – roosts at Queens Park.
