SureAI

Why.

I've asked myself countless time why.

WHY would you make this choice to have the DAMN GROUD WALKING PIDGEONS / PHEASANTS / Whatever trigger sneak detection? It makes no sense! They are tiny, PASSIVE, non-combatant CRITTERS that die if you breathe on them, BUT, their mere PRESENCE COMPLETELLY screws with our ability to sneak around the ACTUAL threats by having us displays as CONSTANTLY DETECTED, such that we have NO FREAKIN CLUE whether we really are getting spotted or not by what matters.

It's not just birds; deer and foxes normally won't attack you but do detect your sneaking, causing the same type of consternation you describe. However, as far as I can recall, rabbits don't detect you sneaking.

But that's just it. A deer I can understand, as it's farily large and easy to spot, a goat as well and they aren't all over the place, but the rest are just too damn small to notice beneath all that fancy grass and flowers so I can kill them and stop the immenselly annoying detection trigger.

As far as I remember, out of those critter types that are in base skyrim, only deer trigger detection, (Maybe goats as well) the the rest dont, not even foxes, so it HAS to be something they implemented ON PURPOSE, and I find that to be pretty absurd. It doesn't even help to locate them for meat / whatever if THAT is what they are going for because of the ridiculously dense grass.