Birdy

"Birdy", directed by Alan Parker, came on screens in 1985 in France. I was a kid and watched it in a cinema theater that doesn't existe anymore, with a friend. There is a book on the old theaters, "Que reste-t-il de nos cinés?", by Max Brunel (Ed. Domen, 2000). These places saw so many thoughts and dreams they should last forever, they are secondary birth homes.

"Birdy" told the story of an ancient soldier who wanted to be a bird. Mathew Modine was great, and this might be the movie that revealed Nicolas Cage in Europe.

Birds represent freedom, as they seem to be free from gravity. They bear a symbol, a little more than balloons filled with helium, and the aren't much more to us.

Weirdly, it is hard to imagine that they have thoughts, pleasures, sensitivity. People tend to believe that only mammals have these abilities, and this at various degrees, as if the cows we eat, the fighting bulls, the kittens lived in a deep intellectual fog. Intellect, intellectus in latin, derived from intelligere or inter legere: to associate, to read between - to understand.

Birds can be domesticated, like bees, but can't become our friends, or exceptionnally - hunting falcons in Mongolia, cormorants helping fishermen in China, ravens...

There are so many interactions between species, yet. We are not so clever if we can't understand it. Birds interact with nature (they have pleasures! Look at the bathing starling above!), with other birds, and with other species...

I can't tell how much I love barn swallows. Being more optimistic than english speakers, we say that the swallow brings back Spring. One is enough. The first sparrow(s) are kind of scouts. They see if the conditions are good, if the nests of the previous years are still there. If so, the group follow. They repair the nests, they add animal Winter'hair to make them confortable... Every male-female pair help the others. The pairs stay together to breed for life: they are socially monogamous, though often sexually polygamous. When the babies are born, adults take tours to go out looking for food. The others keep the nests to avoid being cuckholded. They have 2 or 3 broods a year, and can live up to 10 years...

They are incredibly gracious.

Our poor swallows are threatened.

Some insects they need to eat are poisonous with pesticides.

Nests are destroyed with old barns, or when ancient building are restaured. They use man-made housings and bridges for immemorial times, they don't know any other way to nest.

They are hunted in some african villages. Specialists tracked once the birds rings and sadly found them changed in trophy-necklaces.

I know, they benefited from forest-clearance, which makes them look a bit like war-profiteers, but so are we, at least till some extent. There might be 190 million swallows in the world, for how many millions of humans?

A pair of common starlings bathing in a fountain shaped as a lavogne (man-made pond for herds and shepherds, in the south of France), in the village of Cazevieille. One of them left when we approched, the other had too much fun. It was a contagious pleasure. They probably didn't have eggs yet... From my experience, parents can't take long bath, only quick showers. Starling's eggs have the loveliest celadon color...

There was a frog too, as there should be in every village fountain.