What makes a bird good or bad?
Shared by SUSANNAH CLEMENT
What makes a bird good or bad?
Lachlan: I can see a Myna Bird … … That looks like a good one. Mum is that a good one or the bad one? Is that a good one or a…
Bella: No that’s a bad one
Lachlan: I can’t see any good ones…
Bella: No we haven’t, it’s rare to see good ones around here….
When encountering invasive species, even when walking in neighbourhood streets, we construct moralities around the bodies of all urban subjects. Birds and people, become politicised. As Haraway (2008, p. 42) writes ‘we and others are entangled in knots of species and are co-shaping each other in layers of reciprocating complexity.’ The diasporic Indian Myna bird (Acridotheres tristis) is no more invasive than the white invaders that brought it to Australia over 100 years ago. If we start to unpack these moralities, more fruitful and important questions about the continuing machine that is colonisation and it’s more-than-human impacts might be possible.
References
Haraway, D. (2008). When species meet. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Image source: NSW Office of Environment and Heritage: https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/questions/deterring-indian-mynas
