A Bird of a Different Feather

A Bird of a Different Feather

‘March of the Penguins’ will soon be on show at British cinemas. In the USA, it has caused a great debate about the true meaning of the penguins’ story. It made me think about how metaphors can be used to obscure the truth in any debate, and specifically of how the cliched avian metaphors for foreign policy attitudes distort a discussion which affects all our lives. National defence is not about hawks versus doves. That’s just what the ‘doves’ want you to think.

‘The dove sits near running water so that if it sees a hawk it can dive in and escape’. So says my thirteenth-century bestiary. Countries don’t have that option, of course, which is where it all starts to break down. Metaphors can be out of date and they can be inappropriate, especially rigid either-or propositions. When a cliché narrows foreign policy to two flight paths, as the hawk-dove label so regularly does, the odds of finding a safe route go down. Lazy ideas bring real dangers.

Just as others have suggested we should think beyond left and right when considering the wisdom of military intervention (See the Henry Jackson Society), let me add to that: think beyond hawks and doves. As cinema audiences argue over what lessons in life can be learnt from the penguin, it is time to open our minds to the larger iconography of the birds.

We all know ‘hawk’ is a boo-word. According to my bestiary, ‘the hawk is the devil, lurking in order to tempt us’. Hawks are predators: swift, brutal and powerful. They seize what they want because they can. They kill to feed, swooping down on the weak and defenceless. Contrariwise, everybody wants to be on the dove’s side. Doves are pure, emblematic of the Holy Spirit, bringers of the olive branch to Noah. Criticising a dove is like kicking a puppy.

But there are more than two birds. Who, for instance, would wish to be an ostrich, or ‘stratocameleon’, burying his head in the sand and imagining danger will have the courtesy to pass by? More than a few now known as doves could deserve that title, if we allow a wider flock of terms. Who will admire the screech owls, whose ‘mouths speak what overflows their hearts; what they think inwardly, they utter in their voice’. Career doom-criers deserve this title, especially as they are so often ‘bound by a heavy laziness, hovering around graves by day and night’. Ovid sums the species up in his Metamorphoses, ‘A sluggish screech-owl, a loathsome bird, which heralds impending disaster’. Yes, there are those who shriek around death without the energy or restraint to conceive a strategy against it, and they are not doves.

If many fouler birds hide behind the wings of the dove, there is unacknowledged virtue flying with hawks. Consider the partridge, who will equip her nest with elaborate defences. ‘They clothe their dwelling with thorn twigs, so that any animal which attacks them is held back by the sharpness of the brambles’. The next time someone argues for the renewal of Britain’s nuclear deterrent, they should be able to present themselves as a prudent partridge defending their home, not a blood-soaked hawk.

So-called hawks may also be better known as wild geese, and without having to resemble Richard Burton. Everyone knows the sacred geese of Juno, who awoke the guards of the Capitol to the threat of the approaching Gauls. According to the De rerum naturis of Rabanus Maurus, ‘they stand for provident men, watchmen who take their task in earnest’. Wild geese fly high, remote from earthly rank, keeping watch for their tame cousins below. ‘The cry of geese saved Rome from enemy attack, the outcry of the watchful brother protects the common life from disturbance by evil-minded men’. Who would not be proud to fly with the wild geese?

Yet one bird commands our attention above all others as an emblem for those who will contemplate military action in the service of justice, freedom and human dignity—the pelican. If the dove gains applause as a symbol of the Holy Spirit, the pelican deserves as much, for it is a traditional symbol of Christ, of one willing to suffer for its fellows. The pelican mother was said to tear open her own breast, feeding and reviving her offspring with her blood. ‘Her love brings them back to life’. The pelican has long been an important symbol: it can be seen in pride of place on the crest of Corpus Christi College in Cambridge. But this great symbol deserves to be remembered outside the academy. Not all who shed blood are hawks. Some are their antithesis: the pelicans.

The dove is a simple bird, and has been keeping bad company of late, no doubt impressed by the sophistication of his fellow-travellers. Luckily, my bestiary reveals that doves are able to recover from blindness. Likewise, we must find a way to stop the ostriches from fooling us into complacency, or the screech-owls driving us to despair. When that happens, we will find birds to imitate which combine action with wisdom. Hawks may not be admirable, but partridges, wild geese and pelicans are birds to inspire human heroism: prudent, vigilant and willing to bear sacrifice for the greater good. ‘Divine providence would not have revealed the natural qualities of birds so clearly if we had not been required to gain some advantage from it’.

Unfortunately, the bestiary is silent as to the exemplary qualities of penguins.