Random Thoughts

Much is written how to attract birds to your yard. Nothing about how to deter a specific species. Grackles come down in gangs and chase away the pretty ones. They croak and strut, full of their own importance, pecking furiously and tossing leaves over their shoulders, checking out the larder. Seems like a futile exercise. There doesn't seem to be much under the leaves.

A red wing blackbird visited the bird bath last Saturday and stayed for a while. They tend not to hang around much in built up areas. The swamps at the sides of the roads are their favourite habitats. Judging by the deafening chorus of sweet clear sound, there must be thousands of them in the wet places of Bloomington Sideroad. On a warm day, it's like the air itself is vibrating.

Woodpeckers don't leave in the winter . I see them running up and down the upright maple tree branches. They visited the bird bath on Saturday as well.

But the first robin I've seen this year really made me chuckle. Robin walks about proudly with his chest out full in front.He looks like an usher at a wedding in his brown morning coat and coral coloured vest. He cocks head and listens. Every now and then his beak plunges into the ground and sure enough, he pulls up a worm.

But this was funny. The worm was so long and stretched so far , the robin literally staggered backwards.

A pair of beautiful mallards often visit for two or three days before leaving to find a better place for a nest.

Sometimes , a pair of mourning doves will stop for a rest on stones warmed from the sun. Apparently, they fly for days non-stop from North Carolina. When they come down in my yard, one sleeps while the other watches for a while. They spell each other before continuing on.

Some days the bird bath corner is a kaleidoscope of colour. Blue jays, cardinals, black and white chickadees and the perspicacious robins take turns bathing and perched on the bare branches of the magnolia. Later, yellow finches swoop around in families of ten or twelve. They look like dandelions surfing on an unseen ocean wave.

I know little about birds. Haven't consciously done anything to bring them to my yard. But there they are and very welcome too. I can sit inside and watch them from my comfy chair or later,
in the shade under the maple tree

Sometimes I think how barren this place was when we first came. How much has changed . And how often.

My back yard is sixty-three wide by fifty feet deep, in the middle of a seven hundred and fifty home subdvision. It is home to birds, rabbits ,raccoons and skunks, to say nothing of cats,dogs and humans.

I've seen a red fox, in daylight, sitting on the corner of Wellington and Bathurst, watching traffic.

At dusk, I've seen a shadow crossing Bathurst from woods to fields . At first I thought, that' s a pretty big dog before I realised to my excitement, that's not a dog it's a deer, by jings.

And I' ve thought.... what do those nutbar environmentalist know anyway when they carp and crake on and on about how human habitat destroys wild life ?

What a crock!