To hell with the little birds.

My kids like the little birds, though.  We’ve put up a bird feeder and a suet block every winter since my daughter was old enough to point outside at the world.  She’s now old enough to fill the feeder by herself; her brother is old enough to fight with her about the privilege of doing it, even though he still needs help from her to finish the job.  They peer out the window every morning to see who’s coming to feed: the cardinal couple visits today, the mister looking this way and the missus looking that way as they take turns eating.  Yesterday saw a host of slate-colored juncos, fluttering about the ground under the feeder like large ashes in a slow wind, picking at fallen seed.

We also have squirrels that we feed.  They seem to have shifted territories lately; for a couple of years we had a little charmer unimaginatively named “Blackie”.  He wasn’t a common gray squirrel – his parents must have been a bi-species pairing.  His back was gray, but his belly and face were black.  Odd, since we don’t any black squirrels around here.  But Blackie left us abruptly; we’d hoped he’d not met an untimely end at the claws of a cat or under tires.  As I drove through the neighborhood one day, a squirrel running along a fence caught my eye; it was Blackie, looking fat and sassy only block away.  Apparently the eats were better down the street.

Our current squirrel friends are a motley, flea-bitten couple; they look like they shop at the squirrel’s Goodwill store.  Bedraggled and spotty coats with tails that look like worn-out bottle brushes, they sit in the maple tree looking into our dining room as if waiting for an invitation to lunch.  My daughter has named them “Itchy” and “Scratchy”, since flailing at fleas seems to be their favorite pastime following eating.  They are fun to watch anyhow; they do have personalities.  They chase each other and scrap over dried corn and pieces of bread, walk along our picket fence as if on tippy-toes to torment the neighbor’s dog.

You can sense by now a desperate pet-hunger here.  We have only four goldfish, a sadly unsatisfactory replacement for a cuddly pet.  My daughter has schemed to get a “real” pet, trying to coax the sitter to leave a cat on the doorstep, ring the doorbell and run.  Of course, the sitter tells me this with gales of laughter; she’s allergic to cats and would never dream of touching one, let alone dumping one at my house.  But my husband isn’t a pet person; he wasn’t raised with pets in the house, and he’s just not into the idea of another creature to be cared for (never mind that he wouldn’t have to be the caregiver).  So instead we lavish care on our little backyard friends.

Of all our furry-feathered friends, the most challenging are the newcomers.  My kids are leary of them, not eager to help with feeding.  I guess this means they’re my “pets”; but then, I guess I’m the one who invited them.

To hell with the little birds.  I have crows.

They’ve lived in the area; their rookery may be at the tops of old oak trees in a cemetery not quite a mile away – as the crow flies.  I’ve seen them hanging about over other yards from other large trees, scanning the ground below for food.  Our leavings for the squirrels must have caught their attention.  This past Sunday it was popcorn, uneaten excess from watching movies the night before.  Tuesday, it was stale bread crusts.  The squirrels love this stuff, staying to gorge and then nap in the maple tree.  Occasionally the blue jays come, screeching furiously if the squirrels get too close to the popcorn they claim as their own.

But now, no blue jays or even little birds in sight, in spite of the feast on the ground and in the feeder.  I look out and up, to see if there is one of our infrequent hawks in the treetop; the lack of birds is usually a tip-off of the hawk’s presence.  No, no hawk.  Instead, there are five large shadows at the top of the maple in deep of the yard.  Ah, my friends have arrived. 

They swoop down, not landing at first pass, to inspect the booty to be had.  On third pass they land, half the yard length away and slowly stalk their way up the lawn to the base of the large maple tree.  Every once in a half dozen steps, one jumps back in fright and the others lean or jump away, too.  Skittery, cautious.  Finally, the biggest one arrives at the base of the tree.

He looks up, looks at the bagel chunks I put out this morning, looks around, quickly stabs the bagel with his beak and flies off.  Yup, it’s dead, whatever it is; he comes back as the others watch.  He tries again, this time holding the bagel chunk down, pecks, determines it’s safe and begins to feast.

The others are more hesitant; they waddle-hop a little, like friars in black robes on a winter morning, hoping movement will keep them warm.  The second largest one has a little fringe of feathers, looking as if his vestments were worn and frayed at the bottom.  He sidles up to the largest bird, mimics him for a second, then finds his own piece of bagel to carry off.

One has a crooked beak, rather like a Roman nose; another is non-descript, just a crow’s crow.  The last is the most charming, a brave little piece with the smallest and pointiest beak.  He’s not afraid of the squirrels as the other ones appear to be; he’s willing to make a daring snatch-and-grab run from under the nose of Itchy/Scratchy.  And he’s the one that comes back first, after the neighbor’s dog has been let outside and scares them all off, barking.  “Little Beak” looks at the dog, then works over the food, he’s not afraid of no stinkin’ dog…

The wind’s shifted, coming now from the north.  The sky’s turned a milky-gray and snow is falling.  The food on the ground is covered in a few short minutes.  My shadow friends have left.

I think I’ll build a fire in the fireplace and watch a movie; it’s a good afternoon for that, wintry and blustery.  I’ll make popcorn, too, but as always, I’ll make too much.

It’ll be popcorn for breakfast tomorrow, friends.

11:46:30 AM    comment []