those other creatures – a bird in the hand…

For the past few years, my parents had gotten into birding as the result of visiting Arizona one summer. One day, they were your normal innocent every day senior citizens heading out to the southwest, then suddenly there’s binoculars, cameras with giant telephoto lens, and a whole new shelf full of bird books.

It wasn’t long before they had feeders set up in the backyard and in the frontyard. I had no idea there were so many different kinds of birds in the area. Well, I guess I should have – the place is in a village calling itself a bird sanctuary.

First it was the finches – the golden and the house finches. I had no idea something so yellow was living around the area. Then the cardinals, morning doves, and grackles (I guess they area also called blackbirds). I’d see bluejays occassionally, along with two kinds of woodpeckers, catbirds, robins, baltimore orioles, and these small black and white things whode name escapes me.

I’d hear an owl occassionally, but I think sometimes I confuse them with the morning doves, which by the way, look, act, and sound more like pigeons than doves to me.

The grackles are annoying – they are everywhere. They are one of the larger birds in the backyard. And of course, they tend to eat the seeds and food my parents put out meant for the other birds. These things are pretty smart and determined – they always seem to solve those “grackle-proof” and “squirrel-proof” feeders. The bad things about the grackles are that they tend to chase away the other birds, leave a mess, and steal all the food.

I had no idea there were different feeders for different types of birds. I guess it makes sense because each bird has a different favorite food. The birds are also such sloppy eaters around the feeders. Often, they’d peck at the feeders just to get at a particular seed, and scatter everything in the process – not to mention the bird poo they leave behind.

The finches and smaller birds have a feeder that dispenses smaller seed. The larger feeders have these cages around them, to keep out the larger birds – the grackles mostly. Most of the time, the grackles just wait for the smaller birds to scatter the seed onto the ground, where the grackles can get at it. Occassionally, a grackle will try to stick its neck into the cage and use its long beak to get at the food.

Woodpeckers are different, they have a special feeder that looks like two flat pieces of wood scewed together (with a gap in between for the food) that looks like a tree sandwhich. They feed on a mixture called suet, which I think is more fatty in content, and looks like peanut butter. They tend to put that one out when the weather is cooler, so the suet doesn’t go rancid in the heat. Sometimes though, the downey woodpecker is just small enough to sneak into the caged feeder to get at the seed in there.

Orioles and blue jays, I believe tend to go for small pieces of fruit or peanuts, so there is a special feeder for that. It looks like a plastic slinky in the shape of a lifesaver.

Robins prefer bugs and worms, so I usually don’t see them around the feeders.

Occassionally, I’d see thrushes and swifts. They tend to be slightly larger than the finches. The grackles are large compared to most of the other birds. I’d say the blue jays are just as large, if not slightly larger than them.

The cardinals, finches, and blue jays tend to stay year round. I see the woodpecker in the winter time occassionally.

With summer practically here, most of the birds have returned, especially the grackles. They arrived in droves and now hide out in the thick bamboo forest in the backyard. At this point, I believe they are nesting or mating or whatever birds do in their down time. I stomped on the deck one time and the whole bamboo grove erupted in bird calls and fluttering wings. I tend to be evil, so I kept stomping on the deck for a few minutes.

Seriously, there is not a tree in the backyard that doesn’t have a grackle perched. It really does remind me of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, with all those black birds looming. Luckily, after a while, most of the grackles tend to move on from the backyard.

The new thing though, which really sucks, is that that they seem to be using the pool for their personal birdbath and toilet. I’ve seen them occassionally swoop over the pool and rest at the edges. What they are doing is carrying the bird crap from their nests and depositing it into the pool and washing themselves on the steps. Sometimes they get lazy and just leave their crap on the pool coping. And man, does that leave a stain. More reasons to hate on grackles, as if there needed to be more. They are like the relatives you want to shoot but can’t because of some inconvenient laws and ordinances.

I think we need to hire a cat. Or a hawk. But that’s another entry.