Seventy years ago, Daphne du Maurier’s The Birds foresaw an environmental crisis

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In the 1952 short story “The Birds” by Daphne du Maurier, there is a notable shift in bird behavior associated with the consequences of technological advancements post-World War II. According to the 2022 State of the World’s Birds report, birds act as “barometers for planetary health,” with nearly half of global bird species currently declining. In du Maurier’s apocalyptic tale, located in Cornwall, birds become aggressive and attack humans without provocation. Alfred Hitchcock’s film adaptation, “The Birds,” marks its 60th anniversary in 2023. Revisiting du Maurier’s narrative of continuous destruction highlights how the author foresaw some of the urgent environmental issues we face today.

In her 1989 memoir, “Enchanted Cornwall,” du Maurier mentions that the inspiration came from witnessing a tractor plowing a field in Cornwall, encircled by a “cloud of screaming gulls.” This scene is brought into “The Birds” when the narrator, Nat Hocken, a disabled World War II veteran and farm worker, observes peculiar behavior: “As the tractor traced its path up and down the hills… the man upon it would be lost momentarily in the great cloud of wheeling, crying birds.” Nat notices that although birds usually followed the plough in autumn, it was not in such large flocks nor with so much noise. The tractor is a symbol of mechanization and changes in the landscape. Historian J.R. McNeill notes in “Something New Under the Sun” that agricultural practices transformed starting in the 1950s, with the creation of large fields and removal of hedgerows to accommodate industrial farming. This led to animals’ survival being tied largely to their compatibility with human activities.

In du Maurier’s tale, this dynamic is reversed as birds attack humans. The tractor driver hints at the chaos by saying, “I could scarcely see what I was doing.” Birds attacking human senses, like sight, becomes a metaphor for the failure to notice environmental changes. Nat, who avoids modern technology, focusing instead on traditional methods like fixing hedgerows and using a hoe, quickly realizes that the farm owner’s attempts to shoot the birds are in vain. Like many environmental advocates, Nat is ignored. His closeness to natural rhythms and traditional working methods are seen as odd. Farmer Trigg fittingly meets his end with his gun, as the birds outmaneuver war and agricultural technologies by adopting wartime-like strategies. This is emphasized when an RAF plane falls in the same field where the tractor was working, brought down by birds.

Du Maurier noticed a world increasingly detached from its environment. Her sensitivity to nature’s balance and the swiftly changing technology and society (like Nat’s neighbors’ council houses being less secure against bird attacks than his own thick-walled cottage) highlights this disconnect. Her story illustrates the fragility and unsustainability of our social and economic infrastructures. “The Birds” predated Rachel Carson’s 1962 “Silent Spring,” which was groundbreaking in exposing the harmful ecological effects of pesticides in American agriculture. Carson, drawing on John Keats’s poem “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” which speaks of a barren land where “The sedge has withered from the lake, / And no birds sing,” underlined literature’s role in portraying environmental crises. Carson’s book opens with a vision of a silent spring: a time when mornings once full of bird song are now quiet, and the absence of bird voices signals broader environmental degradation.

Similarly, in “The Birds,” winter arrives abruptly, and the ground hardens instantly. While Carson’s work elucidated human-caused environmental destruction through scientific text, du Maurier illustrated the dangers through fiction. In du Maurier’s narrative, war—especially one of the magnitude she experienced as a civilian—acts as a force that drives technologies of mechanization and chemistry, continuing to devastate the planet. “The Birds” is a bleak story; Nat’s efforts to warn London about the approaching danger from the birds fail as the telephone exchange operator is disinterested and dismissive, indicating her plans for the evening, which seems trivial in comparison to the looming threat. Nat muses on her indifference: “She doesn’t care… She hopes to go to the pictures tonight. She’ll squeeze some fellow’s hand, and point up at the sky, and say ‘Look at all them birds!’”

When considered today, Nat’s remark critically reflects on Hollywood’s interpretations of du Maurier’s story, which often overshadowed the original narrative. Modern audiences need to scrutinize du Maurier’s “The Birds” to comprehend the warning that “something in nature has turned against us.”

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