Vile Avians

My wife puts food out for birds, and she delights in their visits to our yard.

She chases away the squirrels who try to cadge some of the tasty seeds.

But is this wise? Look at what happened in New Zealand.

When humans first arrived there, the only mammals on the island were bats and sea mammals. The ecology was mostly ruled by a diverse variety of birds.

You might guess this occurred because land mammals never got a foothold on New Zealand. But, no:

Until 2006 it was thought that no mammals, other than bats and marine mammals, had reached New Zealand before humans did. The discovery of a femur and mandibles of an extinct non-volant (non-flying) mammal in Otago, dated at 16-19 million years old, has changed the view of New Zealand's evolutionary history, as it strongly suggests that mammals had been part of New Zealand's fauna since the break-up of Gondwana. The fossil has been called SB mammal. It is not known when, or why, land mammals went extinct in New Zealand but there were none present on New Zealand for several million years before the arrival of man.

"It is not known why..." Yeah, right. I know why. It was the birds. Did you ever see the Hitchcock movie, The Birds? That should have been a warning to us all.

They watch us with beady eyes,
and flex their feathery pinions,
waiting to launch a surprise
assault upon our dominions.

(Thanks to Miss Breeziness for indirectly raising this topic in her comments here.)