Dictionary

it's an ill bird that fouls its own nest en · X

Meanings

1. A condemnation of anyone who damages their own group, reputation or interests.
   • It's an ill bird that fouls his own nest, and we are all Scots folk and all Hieland. 1893, Robert Louis Stevenson, Catriona:
   • 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. 2005, Richard Ostrofsky, Sharing Realities: Toward an Epistemology of Conversation, →ISBN, page 173:
   • 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. 1872, John Ruskin, The Eagle's Nest:
   • 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. 2013, Charles Macnab, Understanding the Thomas D'Arcy McGee Assassination, →ISBN:

Relateds

don't shit in your own nest · foul one's own nest