Monday, February 8, 2010

Bird Questions

I have as I am sure I have written before, a bird feeder right outside my kitchen window. It hangs under the eave, far enough down that squirrels can’t get to it, because it hangs under and that means getting back to the roof is very difficult for them. They would have to drop to the ground but there are far too many cats for squirrels to care for that very much. So they leave the seeds alone. It is much to high for cats. So I get to hang out in my kitchen with the birds, who still prefer it if I am not there at all. The “he” in this poem is a house finch or a gold finch, fat little things who have a route. My feeder is on that route.

Bird Questions

He came and asked me
what's with the glass? He sometimes
forgets it's there. It's
against nature, he
says adamant and angry, but then
he admits we are
better off inside
where we do so much less harm
than we otherwise
might.

March 30, 2009 12:36 PM

8 comments:

  1. I like! We have a mockingbird that repeatedly bangs himself against the glass in the door to our deck. I don't know if he sees himself reflected, or if he just wants to come in and take a look around, but he comes almost daily.

    One of my saddest days was the day we cut down the huge oak tree that was host to many, many birds and was right outside our window.

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  2. It's beyond me why someone would think of birds as "rats with wings" but my office's admin assistant does. I do pay a price of bird poop on my car though.

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  3. I gave up fighting the squirrels and gave them their own dedicated feeder full of critter mix too big for the birds. Helps maybe 50%, but squirrels are still rodents at heart...

    A finch slammed into the back window last week and I went out to check on him. He was stunned but alive so I brought him inside for awhile. Once he woke up and realized where he was, he wanted right back out again. Desperately.

    Too much knowledge is scary, even for a bird brain.

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  4. Knowledge is an acquired taste brought on usually by the confusions of pain and desperation. This is interspecies truth. The thing that changes is the subject matter and focus of the knowledge at hand. The complexity of the necessary knowledge does not change. :)

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  5. Mmmm, I too love to watch birds. Love their staccato movement on the ground that transcend to a graceful glide in the air.

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  6. The smaller winged ones are definitely very busy scanning the world for threats and they do have a jerky quality to this activity. I think that means they are looking for movement more than for the identity of the threat, that their eyes are geared to that. I don't know how they do that precisely.

    I know about insects and the compound eyes they use. As soon as a movement reaches the boundary of one facet and signals on another facet, the whole facet of the compound eye fires. There is no such thing as a movement slow and gradual enough to not jerk large under that condition. That is how flies detect you and escape in time as you try to catch them. The only way to catch or kill them is to be too fast with hand or swatter. Sneaking up on them just can't work.

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  7. I like this. Reminds me of the rooms...xxx

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  8. This reminds me of being a teenager. We were all that way then, like the bird.

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The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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