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Clover and the Birds of the black forest - Judgement Bird, Punishing Bird and Big Bird have a lot of things in common, but at the same time they have contrasts between each other. Let's start off with Clover.
Clover, as portrayed in their source material, is the sixth soul to fall into the underground and the yellow soul of justice or Judgement. They typically dress like a cowboy, complete with a (toy) gun, which gets upgraded to a real gun due to Starlo just straight up buying the kid one. During Clover's journey in the underground, they seek justice for those fallen before them, as well as justice for monsterkind (In the pacifist route) or Judgement for their actions and potential genocide (can ranged from flawed pacifist with Ceroba to the full on genocide route). How are these relevant to the birds though?
Judgement bird, otherwise known as Long Bird (due to it's long neck) should be the most obvious of the three, and thus I shall be starting with it for the birds.
“To keep the forest's peace, Long Bird weighed the sins of those who entered the forest. For Long Bird's scale was fair and just, and could weigh any and all kinds of sin.”
Out of the three birds (and their union) and their many forms of symbolism in and for the world crafted by Project Moon in Lobotomy Corporation, Library of Ruina and Limbus Company, Judgement Bird has the role of the Judge. To Judge each sin on it's unbalanced scale, tilted to one side in case it were to ever completely balance out. I feel this Bird would be the one that Clover would synchronise the most with, because that's what Clover mostly does, particularly in the genocide route. In pacifist, flawed or not, that scale is fair and just, like Long Bird's used to be, but in neutral and genocide, it can tilt wildly from a mostly fair scale to a scale similar to the bird of Judgement's own. The primary difference between the two would be how they look at their own Judgement. For Judgement bird, it's Judgement is blind, hence the bandages across it's face, having given away it's eyes to Big Bird to protect the forest. It is also stated that “The scale always tilts the same direction, but it doesn't know this as it's eyes are covered. Or perhaps it's turning a blind eye to the truth”. Clover’s Judgement isn't particularly stated for it's method, however, from my understanding, it comes from Clover's own information and the battle system - To spare a monster, you need to interact with them and understand them. For a guilty verdict, they’re peppered with bullets until they crumble into dust. The one exception to this is Flowey the Flower. Flowey the Flower, during the events of Undertale Yellow is at the peak of their power, pulling the strings behind it all and allowing Clover to save and load with Flowey as the proxy. Namely so that Clover would stop dying every thirty seconds, but that's besides the point. Due to this, Flowey would be nigh impossible to prosecute unless some miracle occurred, Clover gains determination to surpass Flowey's, or the seventh human, Frisk, falls prematurely. Take the neutral ending, for example. Martlet offers Clover to come and live with them, and Clover accepts. Flowey then kills Martlet and psychological horrors Clover until Flowey gets bored and resets back to when Clover falls into the underground. Thus Clover cannot judge the Flower, for the flower always Co.es out on top - except in genocide, but that's immediately after killing a determination souped up Martlet and Flowey trips up the facade. (Yeah I'm definitely adding the Undertale Yellow Spoilers tag to this).
Punishing Bird, otherwise known as Small Bird, is the second of the 3 birds we'll be covering for this.
“Small Bird decided to punish the creatures’ wrongdoings with it's beak.”
Punishing Bird would class as the executioner if we were going with the “Judge, Jury, and Executioner” saying that the birds were partially based off of. It also has the E.G.O weapon that, in my opinion, would be one of the ones Clover would be most comfortable with, particularly amongst the birds. There are a few I feel might fit better for Clover as a whole, Namely Solitude (Old Lady) and potentially Justicia (Judgement bird), but I don't feel Clover would actually use Justicia, due to it being more of a sword rather than Clover’s usual revolvers and the sort. Tangent aside though, the Bird of Punishment works great for more violent neutral run Clovers - attacking monsters in self-defence, as well as some variations of Genocide, and, most importantly, thier relationship with Asgore, King of the Monsters. No matter what route you take, Clover does not like Asgore and his actions, albeit there are only two routes where we can explore this dynamic using only the source material - Flawed Pacifist and Genocide. In Flawed Pacifist, after the Ceroba fight, Martlet brings Clover to Asgore to try and negotiate with Asgore about Clover living in the underground. Talks fall flat nearly immediately though, and thus Clover and Asgore fight at the barrier, with Clover's soul becoming a soul in a jar. To explain the correlation with Punishing Bird, let's start from Ceroba and move from there. The fight with Ceroba is a very long battle, one which she is very desperate to win - nothing much else to lose and her daughter, Kanako, back to gain, after all. At the end of the fight, once Ceroba's mask shatters, Ceroba breaks down and asks Clover to kill her. Flawed Pacifist is where Clover does choose to kill her. Punishment for her sins of manipulating a child (Clover) and injecting a serum she had no idea what it would do into her daughter (with said daughter's consent, despite it being a horrible idea.) From there, I'll skip over the solemn walk to Asgore - not really much to say there - and I'll skip to the barrier, the gate and wall to monsterkind's imprisonment in the underground. Before the fight begins, Asgore reveals the 5 human souls collected before Clover, which enrages Clover and causes them to pull out their gun before the fight begins (and Clover gets absolutely steamrolled by Asgore). In Genocide, however, Clover just straight up Biden blasts Asgore to death. Well, it's not quite a Biden blast but instead a soul laser, but calling it a Biden Blast is funnier and more politically relevant. Clover slays Asgore in retribution for the death of the children before and they are set free. There is no clearer example of the death penalty you can see, minus maybe Judgement Bird's hangings. Though dying to any of the birds isn't preferable. Would you rather be hanged, by eaten by a stomach smaller than you are with tendrils coming out of it, or just eaten normally? To be honest I'd chose Big Bird’s, but this is once again a tangent. The point of the section is that Clover does act as a punisher of sin when going down a more violent path, even if their methods of doing so are less than desirable.
Finally, the Bird Clover fits in the least with - Big Bird.
“Big Bird, with it's many eyes, decided to watch over the forest for intruders. For Big Bird's eyes could see very far, and see things we cannot see.”
Big Bird is truly the bird of all time. Asides from that though, it seeks to protect the people of the forest from the beast. It's primary problem though is it's method - killing creatures in a more humane way - biting their heads off! It is stated that Big Bird is “completely ignorant of the common perception of death” and that “death in itself is salvation”. How does this link to Clover though? Well, it doesn't really, minus the desire to protect. This has led me to an interesting idea regarding a possibility where Clover retains memories between resets though - Clover purposefully going on a Genocide route in order to ‘protect’ their friends from ‘the beast’ in Flowey, after one too many neutral and pacifist runs without Clover's sacrifice result in Flowey ruining them. This would have to be one seriously broken Clover in order to do this though, and would probably result in Clover falling significantly out of character. The closest example of a Clover I can think of who would do this would be a combination of the versions of Clover we see in Wish it was Black and White, But Alas and the version of Clover we see in The Unroosting Pair, and even then, that would be quite a stretch. It is due to this that I find Big Bird to be the least compatible Bird with Clover.
But what about that last Bird? The union of the three, the Apocalypse Bird? That Bird is complex to say the least, being the amalgamation of the three, a representation of the top 3 Corporations in The City (A Corp, B Corp, and C Corp), and a security state gone too far. There is another thing that can be said about it though:
“Then, in the middle of all the chaotic cries, someone shouted: “It's the beast! A big, scary monster lives in the black, dusky forest!””. In terms of Clover, this Bird could mean many things yet none at all, depending on the context and the narrative spun. It could represent the surface or the underground, with the way each society is run. It could represent Clover succumbing into their own form of the beast, or, paradoxically, it could represent a beacon of hope and unity, with the birds and Clover working together to face an insurmountable force, with the powers previously used for destruction and collapse being utilised as a beacon of hope. That last one is more part of an idea I have for near the end of a fic that's been circling around in my head for months but to be honest I suck at writing and I have exams, so if any reader wants that, you'd have to wait until at least June or July as a minimum. Hopefully, by then, someone could have used this relatively minor analysis of ideas to have their own ideas regarding this strange pick of characters from two completely separated works of fiction, with the only link being fanfictions with a good 10 other series in as well. Anyways, that's enough ramblings from me - hopefully someone can gather something good from this.