“Like Smash Bros, but with Birds”
Remember how I talked about that I would be making some sort of list article in the coming weeks? Well, this is it. My greatest scientific achievement. Using my completely accurate and objective methods of classification, I will be creating a tier list of birds. It will be the ultimate reference in knowing which birds are the best, and will be completely truthful and not at all colored by my own personal whims and feelings. The system of classification that I’ll use for ranking the birds is definitely not just how I feel about the birds but is rather a scientific analysis, with numbers and symbols and python functions. It’s legit, trust me.
Now, before we get into this, there’s a few things I need to explain. Like, for example, what is a tier list? Well, the short answer is that it’s a list that assigns a “worth value” or “usefulness value” to a specific character, feature, or group. It’s often used to compare video game characters (especially in fighting games), but it can really be used for anything. Generally, grades are given out based on where a character falls on the tier, ranging from S-Tier as the best, followed by A-Tier, and F-Tier as the worst. A tier list looks a little something like this, generally:
Of course, ranking real things based on some sort of inherent value or worth can become pretty problematic because it implies that there is a “best” way to live or a “best” way to be, and that isn’t true. But this is the internet where everything can be ranked and things are already terrible, so why not scream into the void a little longer? How about we close out the decade with a good old-fashioned list article, huh? So now let’s get onto everyone’s favorite game where the rules are made up and the points don’t matter, “Andy Makes a List of Birds.” It’s a holiday classic!
Oh, one last thing: besides the fact that my rankings of the birds are entirely arbitrary, the orders I choose are also entirely arbitrary. See, the actual taxonomic tree of birds is pretty wonky, and there are actually a couple of viable variations for different families, orders, and clades of birds. But all those classifications are just ways to group birds based on evolutionary history, so they don’t really matter all that much. Until they do, anyway. But the key to remember here is that science is messy and so am I, so I’m going to pick and choose bird orders to rank at my leisure, like the worst biologist in the history of science. Maybe one day I’ll get around to doing a numerical ranking. That might be fun! But hell, I’m not paid enough to do that. I’ll leave that kind of science to Brian David Gilbert.
Anyway, here’s the birds.
Palaeognathae (Ostrich and co.): S-Tier
I’m going in order of how they appear on the cladogram I found, which I’m sure is organized with some sort of rhyme and reason, so I guess it makes sense to start with the order (technically a clade, I guess) that is furthers away from all the other orders of birds. I suppose you could call it the First Order. But why are they S-Tier? I firmly believe that every bird is S-Tier until proven otherwise, but let me explain anyway.
Short answer: Because they’re wacky-looking and I love it. Ostriches, Emus, Cassowaries, Kiwis, and a couple of extinct mega-birds that could kick the shit out of prehistoric predators? Sign me up. Long answer: because they’re genetically distinct from all other birds and that’s pretty awesome, so they get bonus points for their uniqueness. Plus a lot of them have super-powerful legs that let them run and kick at incredible speeds, or they have highly developed camouflage (hello, tinamous) that let them hide from predators. And the cassowary has a shovel taped to its head. Plus the ostrich is the heaviest and tallest bird on the planet. That fucking rules.
Galloanserae (Game Birds and Fowls): A-Tier
Now, this order includes both waterfowl and landfowl, which is a pretty wide spectrum. Yet, at the same time, they’re all kind of similar. You’ve got chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, pheasants, quail, and more. They come in all sorts of different sizes and colors, but the biggest thing they all seem to have in common is that we like to eat them. If you eat a bird, generally it comes from this order. And that’s pretty useful.
Domestication of the chicken has been pretty integral to diets for a solid portion of history, so I would be remiss to put this order at anything lower than an A-tier. But at the same time, geese are assholes and chickens are kind of lame. Plus ducks can get real fucking weird (or should I say real weird fucking?), so they get knocked a few points for that. But as everyone knows, the turkey was not almost the US’s national bird, and I think Ben Franklin was on to something.
Strisores (Nightjars and Hummingbirds): B-Tier
Now, here’s where things get murky as far as the taxonomic classifications go. Because this bird family contains nightjars, like the common nighthawk fellow up there, as well as potoos, frogmouths, oilbirds, and others. All of them are muted browns and greys and they tend to hunt at night, searching for insects. But then, at the same time, hummingbirds are part of this group. What?
Hummingbirds are colorful and I love them and I got to hold a couple of them this past summer, but how did they end up related to these guys? Don’t get me wrong, I like nightjars and whip-poor-wills as much as the next bird person, but potoos are very clearly cursed and I wish to stay away from them. So this group loses points for taxonomic confusion and for actually being aliens that try to hide as birds.
Columbaves (Pigeons and Cuckoos): D-Tier
I love all birds, but this group is really pushing the bill for me. City pigeons are, by far, my least favorite bird species. They’re a nuisance, they’re stupid, and they’re dirty, but they’re one of the most versatile and adaptive species alive so props for that. But then this order also has cuckoos, my second least favorite type of bird. In general, cukcoos are brood parasites, meaning that they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. When the cuckoos hatch, they push out the baby birds of the host species. And if the host species kicks out the parasitic cuckoo, other cuckoos destroy the host nest. This is called the Mafia hypothesis, which is a pretty kickass name for a scientific theory, so points for that.
To be fair, this order also has Turacos, which are pretty, and sandgrouse, which are goofy, so they get some redeeming points for that. They aren’t all terrible and/or stupid. Hey, is that movie Parasite about cuckoos?
Gruiformes (Rails and Cranes): S-Tier
Cranes are cool. There’s no doubt about that in my mind. Sandhill cranes migrate in vast quantities every year, and you can hear them long before you’ll see them. They’re a regular sight in certain parts of the midwest. And whooping cranes almost went extinct, but thanks in part to the sheer genius/utter madness of these guys who dressed up like a crane and flew a crane-shaped plane for hundreds of miles, they are rebounding. And if that isn’t a heart-warming story, I don’t know what is. Although that’s not heartwarming is that program is now ending, and thanks to Trump Administration budget cuts to conservation efforts, the reproductive success of whooping cranes is expected to fall to near pre-conservation levels. That makes me sad, just like how 1/4 of all North American birds have died. Everything is sad.
Just because all this research is now making me sad, I need to give these guys an S-Tier just to make myself feel better. But they deserve it, anyway, because they look really cool and they’re so much fun to watch. Plus rails, the other part of this order are also pretty cool birds. They just look neat.
Aequorlitornithes (Wading birds, Sea birds): S-Tier
There are a ton of birds in this group, but they tend to all have one thing in common; they like water. They’re genetically distinct from waterfowl like ducks or geese, however, for reasons that I don’t quite understand but probably has something to do with leg structure. Because these birds have a lot of long legs. Flamingos, wading birds like pipers and plovers, storks, herons, ibises, and more, they’ve all got these legs that go all the way up, perfect for staying just out of the water so you can stab fish. That’s exactly what I use my long legs for.
On the other hand, however, they’re also penguins and albatrosses, which between the two of them have collectively one whole leg. Penguins are just jellybeans on feet, and albatross almost never land, so I’m surprised their feet haven’t shriveled up and fallen off by now. But still, they don’t need legs; penguins swim better than a lot of fish, and the wandering albatross has the largest wingspan of any bird on the planet, so they can hold their own in a contest. And, as always, there’s the blue-footed booby, which has the best bird name of all time. So this group couldn’t get anything other than S-tier, with legends like that.
Afroaves (Raptors, Hornbills, Woodpeckers): S-Tier
Here’s another one where classification gets a little fucky. Depending on your model of the tree of birds, this group either does or does not include raptors and vultures. For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to go with the version that has hawks and vultures lumped in with owls because why would you put owls with woodpeckers but not hawks? This group just spans the whole array of crazy beaks, though, because it has the sharp, hooked daggers of birds of prey, the gaudy, heavy, excessive lumps of the toucan, and the jackhammer nose of the woodpecker. And somehow they all ended up in the same order. How?
I don’t really know and I don’t really care because this group contains owls, which are my favorite bird family of all time, so they have to be S-Tier. If I gave them anything less than S-Tier I’d be scientifically and morally obligated to change the name of my website to something like “hawkmanandy.com” or “birdmanandy.com” or something else dumb like that. And I’ve already paid for the next year for the domain name, so that isn’t happening.
But I do have a couple fun facts I can share about these birds. For example, owls are actually pretty dumb for their size. Crows, ravens, and parrots are generally much smarter per unit weight than owls. Also, vultures have some of the strongest stomach acid of any living thing, allowing them to eat rancid meat without any indigestion. Finally (and my girlfriend taught me this one), there’s a species of woodpecker that sticks acorns into trees to store them, making patterns that are simultaneously awesome and terrifying to anyone with trypophobia.
Australaves (Parrots, Perching Birds): S-Tier
Ah, here we are. The bird order that everyone knows, since the passerine birds make up almost half of all bird species, or something like that. They’re the perching birds, the parrots, and, oddly enough, the falcons, plus a group of birds that’s been around almost since the dinosaurs. If you see a bird, any bird, you could tell someone that it’s a member of the Australave order, and, as long as it isn’t a chicken, you’ll be right more than half of the time. Sparrows, cardinals, blue birds, macaws, parakeets, cockatoos, peregrine falcons, crows, songbirds, and more all fall into the Australave order. And just for being so numerous and so damn successful at existing, they deserve to be S-Tier.
Besides owls, cranes, eagles, ostriches, potoos, albatrosses, penguins, and plovers, almost all of my favorite birds are in this group. Red-winged blackbirds are some of the prettiest birds ever, in my opinion, and I used to have an orange-winged amazon parrot named Cleo, as well as having two parakeets named Stan and Ollie and cockatiels named Harry, Woody, Pearl, and Ruby, once upon a time. So I have a personal connection to the birds of this family more than almost any other, and I love them all. They’re the birdiest of birds, the ones that everyone thinks of when you say birds. They ARE BIRDS. Birds are real, and these are birds. I love birds. Birds are great. Birds are awesome. BIRDS.
You know, at this rate, I might as well have made them all S-Tier, since all birds are fantastic. Perhaps one day I’ll have the time to truly break down and quantifiably analyze all 30-something proper orders of birds instead of just looking at the clades. Then I could get a more nuanced picture of my true bird tier list.
Most of them would still be S-Tier.
