Okay, so this is completely off-topic, except that our late lamented colleague Julie Waters used to liven up this website with her excellent bird photography. My photo isn’t up to her standard, but it’s a neat story and I wanted to share.
Spouse (Evan by name) and I were flying back to Vermont from out of state. Flight delayed without explanation. (When we boarded the plane an hour and a half late, the info-screen still listed the flight as leaving “on time.”) Killed the time sitting, reading, staring into space, and consuming overpriced airport snax.
While we were sitting there, we noticed a bird or two flitting around the terminal. Little grayish-black birds, about the size of a chickadee. This itself isn’t terribly unusual; birds do get into large open indoor spaces, like big-box stores. And airport terminals.
Evan posited that the birds probably found plenty of food, although not terribly healthy — fast-food leftovers, nuts, chips, etc. But she wondered if they managed to find enough fluids to keep going.
So she took her (costly) bottled water and poured out a few teaspoons on the linoleum. Within a minute, birds were swooping down from all directions. At one point, there were ten of them. Each would drink a little water, fly away, and eventually come back down.
Evan replenished the water a couple of times. After they’d had their fill, some of the birds tried to bathe, rubbing their bellies in the shallow puddle, shaking the water around and grooming their feathers. This continued even though we were sitting less than ten feet away, and passengers were occasionally passing within a few feet of the puddle.
I managed to take a few pictures. Not terribly artistic, but great keepsakes of an unusual encounter with nature in a decidedly unnatural setting. Next time we fly, we might bring along a small plastic bowl.
We sure have done our level best to get in their way.
I just had a terrible experience with our “Squirrel-Buster” bird feed. A Christmas present from a generous friend, the copious feeder has been serving the neighborhood birds for months now.
I arrived home from the store on Tuesday afternoon just in time to see a small bird hanging upside down by its toenail from one of the feeder perches. The perches can be screwed in or out to allow for larger or smaller varieties of birds to land. Somehow there was enough space in one of the screw grooves for the bird to get it’s nail caught.
It was flapping and chirping frantically and I couldn’t exactly see how it was caught, so I gently lowered the feeder to the ground, cupping the bird for protection. I could see that the trapped toe was beginning to bleed.
Once the feeder was lying on it’s side on the ground, I had to figure out in which direction the screw would have to be turned to not further entrap the toe. I was just praying this would free the trapped toe…and thank goodness it did!
The bird flew off right away. Hopefully, no permanent damage had occurred.
I’ve got to take a few minutes to write to the manufacturer to tell them about the problem.
Julie would have been pleased, I’m sure.
The little sparrows all ready to take over the airport terminals when we abandon them makes me think of nothing so much as Loren Eiseley’s “The Bird and the Machine:”