I haven’t noticed teenage birds in as much detail before. They don’t just look like a less refined adult form, they behave like idiots. They are the same size as their parents so you might expect a little better.

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Seagulls are the most obvious adolescents as they are greyish. For teen sparrows they are always itching their semi fuzzy backs as their skin is clearly irritated as they shed. But even if you were blind it is their calls that give the youth away. They are incessantly demanding and coo every two seconds. 

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Preferably you are not blind though, as their behaviour is also important to watch. They can do everything that their parents can do, apart from feed themselves. It is odd to watch a post-baby bird fly, jump, scurry, call, do all the repertoire of birdy manoeuvres apart from peck at food. Thus they are forced to be incompetent followers of their parents who are excessively kind considering the morons they are seeing their chicks grow into. Surely they can see that the one thing their teen children can’t do is far less complex than the things they can do.

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I’m not talking about finding fish in the ocean like a kingfisher. That is pretty skilled and I couldn’t do that. I’m talking about pecking on the floor or just grabbing any food directly. They seem to absolutely require being vommed into. You are too old for this. 

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Maybe they still need predigested food and they don’t have right enzymes yet! That must be it. But at what stage in doing the same thing every day would they get these enzymes? The first vom or the fortieth? The four thousandth? 

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There must be an evolutionary reason for this delay, whether or not my enzyme deficiency theory holds up. Would they get poisoned more easily in later life if they don’t get a regurgitation tasting menu for months on end? They might be learning what serves as food in this difficult and mostly inedible world. 

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But on that note, when does this end? Until they look like adults? The last downy feather drops and then the beaks are down. Or is it just until their parental relations say time’s up?

 

Maybe they are all putting their natural childish parasitism to the test, sucking their parents dry for all they’re worth. And eventually there is a mental breakdown of relations in the family unit as the parents clock on and the using wears thin. Then they go their separate ways as a necessary stage in every parent’s development, which forces their idiot children to grow up. Programmed to inevitably hate each other or they kill themselves with kindness. I think Bird Freud would have a lot to say about this. 

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But he doesn’t exist. 

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July 2023