Birds in the Hood

For all you front porch bird watchers out there who have invested in various bird apparatus, and paraphernalia like, baths, houses, and feeders, to attract your feathered friends; you may want to take notes here to compare with your own observations. I like to take populations of wildlife and accredit human personality and social structures to them, as a way of incorporating everything into my world. I know I’m wrong, but I’m not alone, and I do this strictly for my own amusement, and I thought a few other people might be amused by my plumed allegories.

As far as neighborhood dynamics go, everyone who has ever lived in a large city or suburb knows the break-down here. Country folk have all the same social layering too, but lack the ethnic diversity that city dwellers have, so they will have their own interpretation of bird social status and bird feeder humor. The species will change with the climate and range of the birds; mine are Michigan birds.

My personal favorite and the social butterflies of the bird world are the chickadees. They enjoy visiting with everybody, even humans. These guys are tiny gray and black birds, and will follow you on a hike through the woods. They are quite fearless for their stature and will sit very close to you. They go everywhere and get along with everybody. They will chat it up with whoever is hanging out in the yard today. I equate the chickadees with teenage girls, always hanging out and socializing.

            There are two street gangs in the hood, the blue jays, and the crows. These guys are as mean as rat shit, and cannot be trusted. The jays sport fancy blue, black and white Gestapo uniforms, and fly frequent bombing mission on any and all feeders, and no one is exempt from their wrath. If they decide to nest in your tree, you will no doubt become a casualty of the jays. The crows are the overlords, staying higher above ground and are larger than most of the patrons of the feeder. You know they are bad guys because they all wear black. Being cannibals they use the welcome distraction of a bird feeder to rob the nest of the other birds to kill and eat their babies. The other birds have been fighting these street gangs for eons; they know well the wrath of the dreaded crow.

The neighborhood would not be complete without the construction workers who go around hammering all day. They come in every size and most of them wear red helmets, via management. They are all consolidated union workers, and prefer the outskirts of town, but are often willing to run their jack-hammer on you aluminum window frame at 6:00 AM. I think there was either a mix up with that work order, or the wrong cordinances were put in the flight plan. The biggest rig worker of all these guys is the pileated. When you see him, you know that they have sent out the muscle.

Finches consider themselves a bit upper-crust, especially the gold finches. They won’t be hanging around if you don’t have the absolute best possible food and flowers, or if you are just being too noisy they will not be gracing you with their presence. They tend to stick to the quiet and more privileged neighborhoods. When they do visit, it is always in pairs, and they never stay long.

             Grackles and starlings are quite noisy and I liken them to the cops. They can be mean, and they waste no time in breaking up a perfectly good bird party. They will throw the bird seed out of the feeder on the ground, and chase everyone away. Go home, all of you! No fun for you today! Of course all the bird food on the ground is not wasted, because the mourning doves eat on the ground.

There is a reason they eat on the ground, it is because they are so ungainly and awkward that they cannot land on a bird feeder. If you have ever watched a mourning dove try to land on a clothes line, you know what I’m talking about; they look like the bird version of a goofy clown doing a tightrope act at the circus half time. They also have a bad habit of building their nest in the most unlikely places like, in the hanging flower baskets at Lowes, or on top of the dog house; it’s a wonder they have not gone extinct, just due to lost baby birds.

It’s my considered opinion that they are the stoners of the bird neighborhood. Don’t pretend like you have no idea of what I am talking about; everyone has at least one of those (wake-n-bake) friends who talks like Tommy Chong, and glides through life on autopilot. Apply that personality to mourning doves. Let’s say a cat shows up at a backyard birdfeeder party; (they’re never invited, but are always crashing), everyone on the feeder and in the trees all take flight at once in a mad flurry of feathers and seeds. A few minutes later, the stoner doves are still wandering around on the ground and have just now noticed that everyone else has left. “What? Where’d everybody go?” 

            I used to have a front yard bird feeder; it gave me hours of entertainment, then I got cats; the bird feeder became a cat feeder. Now I have added dogs, so I took the feeder down. My neighborhood birds moved to the backyard, and in protest of removing their bird grocery store, they eat everything in my garden, and I mean everything. What are my cats doing you ask? They go across the street to hunt birds at the neighbor’s bird feeder.

             You try talking to cats; they don’t listen, and they don’t care about your garden. Your dog cares, but in the process of catching the birds, they will take out the entire garden.

             Happy Bird Watching All

                  Sherry