Probably most of you out there recall the Alfred Hitchcock movie “The Birds.” As a kid, I thought that it was a bunch of movie type silliness posing as a “horror” flick. Now, I am not so certain. Since we moved into our present home a few weeks ago we have been faced with all types of birds trying to break into the house. First they attack the windows in the front, and when that doesn’t work they try the side windows. Some of them have these ferocious looking tufts on their head which they puff up while attacking. Another one is dark with some reddish looking color on his chest. Our windows have a metal grill on the outside, and the latter bird sits on the lip of the grill and glares in with dark beady eyes.
The whole thing is enough to give anyone the willies. I asked a neighbor if she had any problems with vicious birds. She indicated that she did not, and that it must be me. She went on to say that birds are like a lot of wild life, and they can tell when someone is not on their wave length. Then, The Blonde in the house mentioned that the neighbor has something like fourteen bird feeders around her house. That led to a “aha” moment for me. I am responsible for keeping our two bird feeders loaded with seed for the freeloading birds. It is a chore that I am not the most prompt in keeping. I mean I do it eventually, but there may be a gap that could be noticeable to the birds – but not more than a couple of days – usually.
In any case, I edged out early this morning while the birds were catching worms before feasting on free seeds. I filled both feeders with high class sunflower seeds, plus some little seeds for what the Blonde calls a Tufted Titmouse. (That sounds like one of the vicious attackers to me.) In any case, it may have worked as I am typing this by a front window and not one bird has attacked the window. One did glare as she flew past, but there was no hostile action! This whole incident has made me wonder about all those folks you see out in the woods looking through binoculars for various birds. Do they carry seeds in their pockets to ward off any malicious attacks by the birds? It must be remembered that the birds can probably see people before people see the birds. I will ask a bird watcher the next time that I see one.
One other aspect about birds that I had forgotten about, and is that they can be incredibly noisy. Where we live now in The Villages, we have a lot of mature trees loaded with birds and squirrels (who also like free seeds, and probably account for the seed in the feeders dropping rapidly.). In any case, we have lots of birds who like to sing, especially the mocking birds. Actually, I hadn’t really noticed the singing for a number of years. Then, I was told – often by The Blonde in the house that I needed hearing aids. (I find that lots of husbands tell me that it was their wife that first noticed the hearing problem – long before they did.)
I will have to admit that I enjoy the birds singing their little hearts out. Now, if they just quit attacking the house everything will be hunky-dory!
Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com.