Your relation to birds

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I have a major fascination with bigger birds: hawks, owls, cranes, eagles. I find them very mesmerizing and whenever I see one flying or nearby, I get distracted and watch them for a while. I think it has to do with them being a rare sight compared to smaller birds.

Chicken tastes nice.

love them , so much that I don't eat them how can you claim to love them and still eat them ?

^^^well at least your honest about it and thank god you did not use the "their already dead" claim , peadophiles could make such claims to.

No offense to any one just saying.

If the magpie that visits you tasted good would you eat it to ?

I like birds very much. I find them beautiful. I wish they would stop pooping on my car though.

I like magpies.

I am not a bird watcher by hobby (don't know their species names, don't hang out in their habitats with binoculars) but if some land in my yard I will hold very still to not scare them.

One day I was in the yard with my daughter. I was sitting in a lawn chair and she was eating Cheerios (oat cereal) and playing around. There was a flock of sparrows hovering in the yard periphery clearly interested in the Cheerio crumbs but they didn't land since my daughter was active and I think the motion scared them.

As soon as she went off elsewhere to play they landed and ate the Cheerio crumbs. One of them came near my lawn chair and started cheeping very loudly. It seemed to be cheeping at me, trying to communicate. I know that is anthropomorphizing but that's how it seemed. I stayed as still as a statue while the sparrow hopped closer and closer to me cheeping loudly. Then it hopped up on my arm and sat there on my arm cheeping. I was shocked because they usually aren't that fearless. I stayed still while it cheeped and sat on my arm

. I said to it, "Do you want me to go inside and get you more Cheerios?"

It stayed on my arm and cheeped which I took to be "yes".

I said "if you want me to get more Cheerios, you have to get off my arm first."

It cheeped and got off my arm. It flew to the grass, looked at me and cheeped. So I kept my promise and got more Cheerios, crumbled them up and threw them to the sparrows. The sparrow cheeped and ate.

Now every time I am near a flock of sparrows I stay as still as possible but none have landed on my arm again. We can't actually have communicated, I don't think, but it sure seemed that way.

I am bird crazy and have been since I was about 8 (I think). There is an old book in our town library about British bird nests and eggs that I still enjoy getting out after all these years. The only bird I have had a bad experience with was on Kawau island (New Zealand) where I was doing some work experience, the bird in question was an endangered Weka (a flightless rail) which would dive into the leaves I was raking up and scatter them all about the place (obviously looking for food), needless to say I lost my cool and nearly hit it with the rake which was taken off me, the bloody thing used to make a racket at night too. So I dont like Weka's but every other bird I adore.

I love birds. My current special interest is moorhens, and I go to the park at least once a week to watch them and feed them. There are some tame common moorhens who I can recognize and feel I have a relationship with, like the other posters described, though the moorhens must see me as just another human with food. Moorhens do lots of fascinating things, eg the juveniles sometimes help to feed their younger siblings, females fight over males (in most species it's the other way round), and they flick their tails to signal vigilance to predators. I've read a lot about them but I still see them do things I don't understand.
One of my past special interests is gulls. Once I visited a kittiwake colony.
I also like feeding and watching the birds in the garden, and I occasionally go on birdwatching trips to the countryside or a bird reserve, where I once saw a pair of avocets with a chick.

Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou, I say, art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore,
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore?

My relation to birds? Well that's quite a long story. It all goes back to the Carboniferous period, where our ancestors were early amniotes. That is when shared our last common ancestor. Soon afterwards the amniotes diverged into multiple groups based upon the possession of temporal fenestra (openings in the temples); with those being the Synapsids possessing only a single pair, the Diapsids possessing two pairs and the Anapsids which lacked any of these openings. The synapsids later went on to dominate the planet within the Permian. Many of these developed many mammalian characteristics, and came to be recognized as the therapsids (the mammal-like reptiles) and are now seen as the forerunners of mammals. But after a cataclysmic extinction even occurring at the period, many groups of animals were reduced to extinction, and the therapsids themselves failed to thrive in this new environment.

A newer group of animals called the Archosaurs evolved and began to dominate many niches. They were descended from the diapsid lineage of reptiles. The archosaurs led to groups of animals such as crocodiles, pterosaurs and even the dinosaurs themselves. At the end of the Triassic these animals took over the Earth and reduced the rest of the therapsids and early mammals to less significant ecological niches. The mammals came to chiefly take over small, nocturnal and insectivorous positions as they were out-competed by the dinosaurs and their kin. Things would stay this way across the rest of the Mesozoic and dinosaurs dominated the planet for millions of years to come -- even taking to the sky as the birds. But another cataclysmic extinction event changed all of this.

The non-avian dinosaurs became extinct. This was followed by a brief point in time where birds dominated the planet. But the mammals soon began to diversify and occupied most of the niches that had belonged to the dinosaurs. Mammals are now quite successful within the Cenozoic and are some of the most diverse organisms to ever live: More so than birds, amphibians and all other extant classes of terrestrial vertebrates.
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Oh... I see you intended to ask if we personally like them or not, and not our relation to them in phylogenetics, ecology and in paleontology. They're pretty nifty, I guess. I admit to enjoying seeing them within my garden and feed them whenever I get the opportunity. I also work with many birds including parrots, fowl, finches, jays and even ratites at the animal centre which I volunteer at.

Birds are the most greedy animals on the planet, more so than humans, because they lack innovation in species. They may look pretty, but all they have to do is eat, sleep, and have babies. That's it.

A goose stole a chicken finger from me as a kid. I guess it was a cannibal and every bird I have met since is extremely greedy.