May 8, 2021 by Amy
Bird Brain
I am completely bonkers for birds. Obsessed. Smitten. Ensorcelled. Can’t get enough of ’em.
It started innocently enough. When we built the house eight years ago I moved my squirrel-proof bird feeder to it, only it didn’t really need to be squirrel-proof any more because there are no ways for squirrels to get on the roof of the new house and get down onto the feeder, but I wasn’t going to buy a new feeder. There it hung, outside my office window, and I filled it maybe a few times a year and didn’t think much of it. I was immensely grateful for the article that informed me that my erratic fillings were not killing birds in the winter. If they didn’t eat at my feeder, they were perfectly capable of finding food elsewhere.
Fast forward to a pandemic when I was trapped in my home office for 8+ hours a day. The bird feeder became a welcome distraction and I filled it all. the. time. After a couple months of watching the birds enjoy their seed, I started paying closer attention, wondering what the most common bird was. Who was hanging out with me? There were lots of wee brown, tan, and white birds with little brown spots on their white cheeks. They made me laugh when eight or nine of them would pile up on the feeder, getting it spinning, even though there are only four perches. I poked around on the internet and discovered that my guests were primarily Eurasian Tree Sparrows, which actually aren’t common at all. At least not in North America. About 20 of them were brought from Germany to St. Louis in 1870 and took hold, but they didn’t get crazy because the badass House Sparrows who emigrated at about the same time are aggressive as f*ck and they were like, “This is our turf, homes.” House Sparrows are larger and carry knives and Tommy guns, whereas Eurasian Tree Sparrows are small and prefer diplomacy.
This week at work, I discovered that a colleague lists “bird watching” as one of his hobbies. Hooray! Another birder! I emailed him and confessed to my newfound interest. Any recommendations? He enthusiastically responded and said that watching the feeders at his house when working from home during the pandemic got him interested, too, and he wholeheartedly recommended the Audubon Field Guide app and binoculars. I have binoculars already. I had the app downloaded within 45 seconds.
And now the obsession has only grown. So far today I have annoyed the shit out of my family by geeking out over sightings of a Brown-Headed Cowbird, a Common Grackle, a Northern Cardinal, Mourning Doves, my Eurasian Tree Sparrows, of course, and a Red-Shouldered Hawk (pictured above in an ultra-shitty photo taken at maximum digital zoom on my phone during my walk). The Grackle and the Cowbird caused the most excitement, because before today I’d have just called them both “black birds.” Nooooo, no. There’s a lot more detail if you really stop and look.
Also I learned that Cowbirds are lazy assholes because they lay eggs in other birds’ nests and leave them there for other birds to hatch and raise. What kind of craptastic parenting is that? “Here’s my egg. Peace out!” And then what do the nanny birds think? They go off to find some delicious worms or empty my bird feeder and come back to the nest only to find an extra egg. Or their egg is gone and has been replaced by this mystery egg (yes, the Cowbird is truly an epic bitch and will sometimes remove eggs to make room for hers). “Wait…this is my nest, right? Well, damn. Frank! The neighbors left their kid here again!”
At 4:30 p.m. I made M refill my feeder which had been completely emptied despite my filling it this morning at 7:30. These birds are pigs. He shakes his head but I think he realizes that my being into birds gets him off the hook on bringing a furry creature into the house, so out he goes, toting the ladder and the giant bag of birdseed. I assure him that it’s only on the weekends, since that’s the only time I have in my home office during the day now that I’m back on campus. What he doesn’t know is that I’m scheming to get new, additional bird feeders. And maybe a bird bath.
Since the internets are all-knowing, Instagram is throwing an ad for a smart bird feeder at me every five seconds. This thing looks way cool, although given the size of the feed storage section and how zaftig my Eurasian Tree Sparrows are becoming, I’ll be refilling it 80 times a day. M and Zoe are on board because it’s tech, and they get a kick out of anything that is “smart.” They’ve been putting up with my phone emitting all sorts of bird calls (thank you, Audubon app) and perhaps they think that if I have live images to look at they won’t have to hear the tweets so much.
This concludes my complete transition into “official old lady status.” Between the cheaters hanging from my neck by a chain and the birdwatching, I have become my gran. She gave me a big book about birds when I was a kid, so I’d like to think she’d be pretty happy that I’m a full-on birder now.
Alternate titles for this post: Going to the Birds, The Early Bird, A Bird in the Hand, Birds of a Feather, Flipping the Bird…damn, there are a lot of bird phrases out there.
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