Sit down, Western Grebe. Talk to the wing, Barn Swallow. Fly away, Barn Owl, and take your creepy flat face with you.
The hotly contested City Bird 2016 election results are in and the Peregrine Falcon has soared to the top, capturing 43 per cent of the vote, crushing the competition with its powerful talons. As a few political pundits will likely point out, the 115,164 votes cast for the Peregrine Falcon are nearly 30,000 more than mayor Gregor Robertson received in the 2014 municipal election. Then again, everyone knows Robertson is more of a Crested Tit man.
The frumpy Western Grebe came in second place with 34 per cent of the vote, followed by the Barn Owl at 14 per cent and the lowly Barn Swallow with nine per cent. But hey, Barn Swallow has a great personality when it’s not too busy building cup-shaped mud nests.
The Peregrine Falcon takes over the symbolic bird throne from last year’s winner the Black-Capped Chickadee. And although we’ve made known our strong support for the humble and underappreciated Red Tailed Hawk, those feelings have nothing to do with our profound disappointment and disapproval of the Peregrine Falcon becoming the city’s official bird for 2016.
In fact, we can’t think of a more douchey bird to represent our city. A falcon? That’s like the Axe Body Spray of the bird world. It’s like Yaletown with feathers. Is this what Vancouver is becoming? A fast-moving hunter that dines primarily on smaller size birds? Imagine a developer who buys every single heritage building in the city, demolishes them and replaces them with luxury condo towers, except those towers are nests, and the developer has a beak. That’s basically what a Peregrine Falcon is.
Mark our words, generations from now, pelt-wearing families will gather around burning tires in their Marpole caves and tell the legend of how hoodwinked citizens once voted for the Peregrine Falcon and rued the day ever since. Red Tailed Hawk in 2017!
