Bird-Brained

It always amazed me at the number of different bird species that frequented our yard in the West Side of the Middle-Boro.

It helped that we had a fully stocked bird feeder in the back yard by the sagging maple tree (the poor thing was attacked by lichens and a fungus, that its branches kept breaking off of it), so there was food and cover for the avians, as well as many a piece of bread thrown out covering the ground if they preferred that over seeds.

There were Starlings and Grackles, the lovely red male Cardinals (and the occasionally green females too),  Northern Orioles, Downy Woodpeckers, Nuthatches, slate-colored Juncos, those sneaky Cowbirds which laid their eggs in other bird's nests, Robins were so plentiful, perhaps the most common visitor along with the Blue jays, Purple Finches, Herring Gulls... and many more.

The Mourning Doves greeted us most days with a mournful who-who-who. The pair of them, always a pair, perched high above on the telephone lines in front of the house. Occasionally they took a break, perhaps during the extremeness of our really bad winter weather, they headed out to Florida for a relaxing vacation, but generally they returned after a while.

The Crows were an ever present dominating presence. They of course are very intelligent birds, and it is said, if someone fires a gun at a flock or is that a "Murder of Crows" while they are flying overhead, they will avoid that section of land from then on... and not only them, but other groups of crows as well. Rupert Sheldrake would suggest that this is a morphic resonance, a learned habit somehow transmitted to unrelated group of the species, but whatever the case, they are very smart buggers.

Though in early New England, they always seemed to return to pillage and plunder many a corn field of the early colonists, much to the chagrin of English, no matter how many ways the Colonists tried to get rid of them.

So, the crows were in our yard  and greeted me many a time with a soulful "Caww- Caww - Caww" which was usually responded to with an equal amount of cawing by a nearby crow in the neighborhood. Whatever they were telling each other, I don't know, but communicating in a type of Avian language they were.  Despite my best efforts at imitating them, they usually looked at me in sorrowful disdain and flew off, seemingly insulted by whatever I said to them.

The wild Turkeys came around in later years. A great gaggle of them to be sure, as many as 15 at a time in their flock with everything from Mom and Pop turkeys to the juveniles and they indeed scoured our yard for every bit of edible food. They especially approved of our seed-laden bird feeder and camped out by the Northern Maple tree. Whether they were spooked or just bored, at times the entire flock would fly up into the maple and roost there, an amazing with so many large turkeys roosting at one time. And intelligent they were, much smarter than their domesticated cousins, who can drown themselves in a rainstorm. So the wild turkeys were numerous in the Middle-Boro as well as their predators, the Turkey Vultures, but to tell the truth, I never spotted any of them in the West Side.

House Sparrows are everywhere, I saw them in the Republic of Georgia and we had them too. They even had built a spacious nest in the eaves of our garage above the front doors, where they raised many a young sparrow in happy seclusion, protected from the elements, predators such as the family cats and insects even. And how did they repay us for living rent free? Well, they crapped all over the garage door, that's what they did. What can you do? It's Mother Nature after all, and I cleaned and painted the garage doors to take care of the mess.

The grandest of our fowl friends was a Short-tailed Hawk I named Shorty. One day it just showed up in the skies of the West Side and our yard. I never knew if it was a male of female, but it carried itself with a magnificent presence though tormenting many of the other birds in the vicinity, hunting them for food. Shorty was constantly on the prowl and seemed to be feasting on the other bird species, as many a time, there would be a great ruckus among the fowl and then a gaggle of birds in hot pursuit of Shorty, who easily outraced them... his wingspan towered over the other birds, so he had an easy time of eluding his gang of pursuers.

I once, much to my regret, watched Shorty with a Blue Jay in it's talons and Shorty was eating the Blue Jay alive, pulling great chunks of feathers and flesh from the Blue Jay's breast. Terrible, but that is Nature for you: Big Fish eats the little fish. And the sad Blue jay never even uttered a peep, perhaps in shock or horribly resigned to its fate. I don;t know, but it was a sad sight.

To say the Hawk was the least liked Avian in our yard was the understatement of the year and I'm sure the other birds were quite gleeful when Shorty got its comeuppance.

It happened one day in the spring or summer. My father was as usual relaxing in his recliner in the living room with his ever present giant- sized plastic cup of Diet Soda watching TV, when there was a Giant Crash and Thud.

For whatever reason: maybe it had been chasing another bird, thought it was an opening into the house or Shorty saw its reflection and thought it was a rival to be dealt with, the hawk had tried to fly straight through the closed front window, right next to where my father was sitting, and smashed himself into the glass. Fortunately, we had installed safety glass windows years ago, so the glass had survived the direct flying assault without so much a whisper of a crack.

But for poor Shorty, we who were there, all went outside and found him in a heap on the front lawn. We didn't know if he had bitten the so- called bullet or was just knocked unconscious. 

But Shorty being  a very resilient hawk, shook off the effects of his rendezvous with disheveled destiny, staggered upward and after a moment's pause to recheck his wits and balance, flew off.

He had survived, though he was a bit bird-brained for the occasion...

Image Credit: https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/short-tailed-hawk