A Kori bustard wants to kill us.
Well. Not really kill us. It wants us gone. It stalks forward across the gravel, heavy and gray and white, looking like a heron that hit the gym too hard. Then it stops. Feathers on its neck explode outward. A shudder runs through its wings. It stares. Then it turns away, silent, and walks back to the flock.
We got the message. We left it alone.
That morning, standing in the Bird House at the National Zoo, I was with Ray Nayler. We weren’t there to watch birds for the sake of bird-watching. We were there to talk about how he writes about them. Nayler is a science fiction novelist. He cares about how humans can be better by learning from animals. Or trying to.
His last two novels, The Mountain in the Sea and The Tusks of Extinction, are about communication across species barriers. Octopuses writing in ink. Elephant researchers living in mammoth brains. Smart stuff. But his new book, Palaces of the Crow, is historical fiction. WWII. Vilnius. Teenagers hiding in the woods while the Nazis invade.
They aren’t alone. They have crows.
The crows help. They guide the kids. They warn of danger. But this isn’t Disney. These aren’t talking birds singing tunes. Nayler researches hard. He knows how crows think. He shows them being crows. Still as statues when they’re calculating a problem. Pecking you in the face if you walk off the safe path. Not anthropomorphism. Just biology.
That’s enough to build empathy. It doesn’t have to be understanding. It just has to be desire.
That’s Nayler’s point. The desire to get it. The attempt itself matters more than the result.
This mindset goes back to his teens. His mother sent him to volunteer at an animal shelter. In California. Decades ago. Kill shelters. Every day he saw people abandoning animals. Cruelty. Neglect. Death. It was awful.
But he saw something else. Personalities. Behind the cages, real beings existed. That’s what hooked him.
While he talked, we looked at barred owls. One was eating a mouse. Whole. Tail first. Then the head. Down the gullet in one go. Efficient. Brutal. Peaceful in its own way.
Nayler likes owls less than corvids. He trusts the peace of birds more than primates. Birds live in large, cooperative groups. They figured this out before mammals did. They look after each other. Even crows, which kill and eat things, also care for one another.
He quotes Peter Kropotkin a lot. An anarchist scientist. Wrote Mutual Aid. The idea is simple. Nature isn’t just survival of the fittest. It’s survival of the kindest. Or at least the most collaborative.
“Life in societies is the most powerfultool.”
Nayler loves this. He puts it in his books. He sees it in the owl watching its mate eat. Unblinking. Secure.
It reminds you of when Nayler realized animals were watching him. As a kid, he noticed they had eyes. And minds.
In his novel, a character says: “I watch the crows… I find them watching me.”
Mutual surveillance. A strange basis for trust.
It’s not always about love. Sometimes it’s just saving energy. A hare sees a fox. Instead of running and burning calories, it stands up. Stares into the fox’s eyes. Says I see you.
The fox gives up.
Both animals save their energy. No chase. No injury. A little truce in the forest. Cooperation within competition.
Nayler tried explaining this to his six-year-old daughter in the woods once.
“I’m smarter than a fox,” she said.
He asked her who was smarter in the forest.
Her logic? A fox survives alone. A human needs help. So the fox is smarter there.
“But who’s smarter everywhere else?”
“I am. Because if the fox leaves the forest, it dies.”
Smart kid. Humans adapt. We abstract. Crows do that too.
They live in cities now. On the edges of our chaos. They wait for kids to walk on tide pools. The kids step on snails, crush shells. Don’t notice. Then the crows come. Feast time.
The edges of our societies are full opportunities for [crows].
They thrive on our mess. In Palaces, the birds feed on the debris of war. Human violence creates garbage. Crows eat garbage. They are survivors of our damage.
But the book has hope.
Nayler talks about Thomas Nagel. That old philosophy essay. “What Is It Like to Be a Bata?” Usually, people think Nagel meant we can’t understand other creatures at all. Wrong. He meant we can get close. Never fully there, but partway.
Asymptotic. Getting nearer and never touching.
Writing stories helps bridge the gap. You care for the creature. In its specific, weird way. You accept its difference. That’s the strength.
The war in the book is bad. Brutal. Anti-Semitism. Violence without reason. But the kindness of the crows also has no grand reason.
“Why would a deeper reason be necessary for kindness?” a character asks.
That’s it. No justification needed. Just kindness.
We stood up to leave.
Zoos are complicated places. They cage animals that can’t survive in the human-made world anymore. The Kori bustard needs a vast plain. It got a pen. The owl needs a forest. It got a branch.
Captivity limits freedom. But attention? Attention travels.
