What are the pros and cons of various woods used in wooden utensils?
I prefer Maple myself but the whole objective is to use wood species that have very tight grains and closed pores. The above that you mentioned all seem in line but as a wood worker I would think that birch would be on the bottom of my list as choices. If you look at hard woods like Oak you will notice a lot of open grain that makes the surface far to porous for this. You want it as smooth as possible so it can be cleaned well when you're done using it.

There could be other benefits that I'm not aware of so this is just an opinion from someone who works with wood a lot. When I mill birch it has a tendency to get fuzzy and it's very labor intensive to get the final piece smoothed out. I don't even bother with it any more.