English

Proverb

it's an ill bird that fouls its own nest

1. A condemnation of anyone who damages their own interests, reputation, or group.
   • 1872, John Ruskin, The Eagle's Nest:

     They say it's an ill bird that fouls its own nest. My own feeling is that a well-behaved bird will neither foul its own nest nor another's, but that, finding it in any wise foul, it will openly say so, and clean it.

   • 1893, Robert Louis Stevenson, Catriona:

     It's an ill bird that fouls his own nest, and we are all Scots folk and all Hieland.

   • 2005, Richard Ostrofsky, Sharing Realities: Toward an Epistemology of Conversation, ISBN 1411656164, page 173:

     The saying, “It's an ill bird that fouls its own nest” expresses the most universal of ethical norms, and is probably the source of all such norms.

   • 2013, Charles Macnab, Understanding the Thomas D'Arcy McGee Assassination, ISBN 098126672X:

     He admitted then to having had, for two years, “documents in [his] possession sufficient to have destroyed [the Fenians operating in Montreal], but [he had] thought it was an ill bird that fouled its own nest.

See also

• don't **** in your own nest
• foul one's own nest