Some photos of birds that went extinct are a little frightening. According to a popular social media music app, singer Ellie Goulding does not understand how some birds are extinct. “Did they check everywhere?” she said. I would not check anywhere for some of these birds.
The birds that you already see are scary enough. While many of us admire them, there are those among us who harbor a justified deep-seated fear of our avian acquaintances; “Ornithophobia,” or fear of birds, is very real. But why? Let us take a look at some explanations for why our freaky feathered friends and foes are so panic inducing to some.
A bad experience with a bird can sometimes lead to fear. For example, my fear of wild turkeys sprouted when I read an article published last year about them surrounding a woman in Cambridge and clawing at her. “Jeanette Atkinson was walking down Spark Street when she spotted the gobbling duo,” according to CBS News. “‘All that was going through my head was do I try to cross the street? Can I avoid the traffic?’ questioned Jeannette Atkinson. ‘I didn’t think I could run faster than the turkeys, or I was afraid I would trip on the sidewalk.’” she told reporters.
However, this is bigger than any one experience. Speaking of bigger—birds come in all shapes and sizes, from the humble hummingbird to the ostentatious ostrich. For some, the sheer size of certain birds can be a fright. Imagine coming face to face with an erroneous emu or cankerous condor!
Then there is the matter of sharpness. The beaks and talons of birds are extra scary when juxtaposed with their soft feathers. I will now draw a parallel between seemingly innocent birds and all those cacti that look fuzzy and all those kids or dolls in horror movies that are possessed. These better known shiver-worthy examples outline the sneaky truth.
Birds are not just the modern horror that inspired a conspiracy theory about government surveillance, or are featured as Mutts in the recent film, “The Ballad of the Songbirds and Snakes.” Descended from meat-eating dinosaurs, there is also an aspect to them that is mysterious and ancient, one whose roots predate humans themselves. Just as we are never quite sure of the contents of an egg before it has hatched, we are not quite sure of the way that the descendants of birds roamed our precious planet. They are like no other category of modern animal. What other reptile can fly? Besides dinosaurs, the closest kin to birds are dragons, a figment of our imagination. In this way, birds defy our present realities, and challenge our imaginations without us even realizing it.
One frightening mystery lies in the contraption that controls the motion of a bird’s head. Think of the way chickens twitch and use their heads for momentum as they walk. Pigeons do that also. Think of the way that large birds will perch somewhere and lock their eyes on you. Think about how scary Mona Lisa would be if she had a beak and could rotate her head 360 degrees while watching you.
The only reason some of us do not freak out whenever we see birds based on how they look and act is probably because we are so used to seeing them. A great blue heron sits on the tallest rock in Sunset Lake in the middle of the night. Exposure therapy, in my case, is necessary for me to complete my journey home past the heron on foot. I often feel silly, being so scared of an animal I am so in awe of. I have to remind myself that I cannot help it. It is like a crush.
The popularity of the horror film “The Birds” by Alfred Hitchcock is an example of how the fear of birds can take hold of people. This film may have influenced people’s perceptions of birds, just as Jaws heavily impacted the public’s perception of sharks. While the fear of sharks is much more understood and accepted than the fear of birds, Jaws is also much more recent and popular than “The Birds.” However, Hitchcock’s film is still a classic American horror movie and could have contributed numbers to the subculture of Ornithophobes.
If you have a fear of birds, then maybe people will say to you that the birds are more scared of you than you are of them. Sometimes people say this because they do not know how scared you are. Remember that your confident coworker cannot read the minds of our flying frenemies, and they also cannot read your mind. Even if the bird managed to be more scared than you, this does not invalidate your fear.
If you think I have ornithophobia after reading this, you just got April fooled! However, I think I really understand why some people are scared of birds because I am scared of birds also sometimes.