By Tim Bryant, Board Chair, The Inn of Last Resort
This thought is for the birds—literally.
In my last job (I’m retired now), I had an office where the windows looked out on a lush green setting with a small creek, a grassy knoll with hardwood trees, and a stand of bamboo. Of course, it wasn’t always lush and green. Those windows displayed the four seasons of our lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, and I enjoyed them all. Those windows introduced me to a blue heron who would visit in the late spring or early summer, possibly coming north in search of cooler climes. He would spend the day fishing in the creek carefully walking on his “backward” legs looking more like a “chicken walker” from Star Wars or perhaps his dinosaur cousin the tetradactyl. Through those windows, I was also a host to a large red-tailed hawk who would perch on a limb above the creek and carefully watch my office.
His interest, of course, had nothing to do with me. He was watching my bird feeder attached with suction cups on my office window. It was made of plexiglass and held enough food for a couple of days of feasting by every kind of bird in our North Carolina family. The chickadee and nuthatch. The tufted titmouse and wren. The regal cardinal and the selfish blue jay. From time to time, a dark-eyed junco would grace my feeder looking formal and resplendent in his “gray suit.” One of my favorites was the Rufous-sided towhee—usually a ground feeder like the junco, but willing enough to take my handout. All day long they would come to feast and fight and fuss!
As I began to get to know my bird world better, I noticed that there was definitely a “pecking order” out there.
For example, a male cardinal would share the feeder with the wrens and finches, but a female cardinal wouldn’t share the feeder with any other bird but the male cardinal. The finches didn’t like sharing the feeder with any other species and would fuss and fight to gain dominance. The diminutive nuthatches and titmice would swoop in, grab a bite and head for the trees to eat their prize, not willing to fight for the territory. Blue jays would hog the whole feeder while squawking and attacking the smaller birds. (I never have liked blue jays since I was chased by them below the pine trees in Wilmington, NC at my boyhood home.) Of course, the larger the bird, the less competition. When the Rufous-sided towhee was on the feeder, everyone else left him alone. It was nice to see this beautiful bird up close, however, since he is a ground feeder, he would kick the seed everywhere as if he was digging it out of the grass below.
The term “pecking order” was coined by a Norwegian zoologist a century ago as he studied “dominance hierarchies” in chickens. Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe observed how domestic chickens create pecking orders and understand their place in them. He observed that chickens peck those with lower status and are in turn pecked by higher-ranking birds.
“Anyone who thinks the inhabitants of a chicken yard are thoughtless, happy creatures with a daily life of undisturbed pleasure … is thoroughly mistaken,” he wrote. “A grave seriousness lies over the chicken yard.”
We can observe these dominance hierarchies in more species than just the bird world. Many in the animal kingdom live under similar pressure in their communities. My guess is that anyone who ever went to elementary or high school understands this, too. I remember going to my 10th high school reunion (yes, a long time ago now) and noticing how strange it was to be back in the same pecking order that I hadn’t experienced since graduation. It was an odd feeling even though the biggest nerd in our class had become a surgeon while the “coolest” guy seemed to be doing the same dumb things he did in high school.
My friend Tracy Ponder told me once he thought all the women in the world were in a single file line with each woman wanting desperately to be friends with the women “in front of her.” He said, “If every other one of them would just turn around” they’d have a potential best friend right in front of them.
So the next time you find yourself frustrated by the “pecking order,” just turn around and offer a hand of friendship to the person behind you. You’ll make their day, and, who knows, maybe a lifelong friend.
