There is a bird

[camwyn]

engaging in personal hygiene outside my window. No, seriously. There's some kind of flowering plum tree or something next to my window, and it's a very popular place for birds to land even when there's no fruit. Right now I am watching a sparrow scratch every itch it has, with feet and beak as seems appropriate... it's like watching a dog scratch a flea bite, then nibble at other itchy spots. Only it's, yanno, a sparrow. She's just sitting there, appily nibbling at this itch or that, turning her head through something like 100 degrees from base orientation to get at itches on her back, clawing at the side of her head with one foot, bending that teeny-tiny neck to get at a spot on her chest that seems to be giving her trouble, checking under her wings because you just can't get there with a claw. . .

Wish I had a big old tray of dust I could just put out my window for her. She'd be able to foof around in it to get rid of the mites that are probably causing most of the itching. I've seen sparrows do this. It's amazingly entertaining to watch, because they look so relieved; it's like watching someone who's just had a good massage.

"Nope. Not migrating today. Not foraging today. Gonna sit here and SCRATCH. . . . just SCRATCH for ten minutes solid. Because I itch, and it feels good to scratch, and because it's safe, and because I CAN."

Let the birdwatchers fuss over exotic species. I like seeing little brown birds.

Comments

Sounds like...

[quintus.livejournal.com]

... my personal ornithological system...

Little Brown Birds

Large Brown Birds

Poxy Pigeons

Poxy Seagulls

Anything else

:-)

[lwood.livejournal.com]

My bird feeder has three tubes: one all black sunflower seed, one with the wee slivers of black seeds known as 'thistle' or 'nyger' depending on the bag, and one of mostly-mullet with some black sunflower seeds mixed in.

On the back deck near the birdfeeder, I have a heavy stoneware plate I fill with a squirrel mix (dried corn, peanuts in the shell, black sunflower seeds, other amusements).

Above the whole mess is a hummingbird feeder.

This nets me:

• Many miscellaneous brown birds -- finches, sparrows, thrushes, wrens, etc


• Doves of two sorts: Mourning and ring-necked. The former are dun brown with a smattering of darker spots along the end of the wings, and the latter are all over dun brown or similarly unspectacular grey, with a white ring around their neck. Anyone calling the dove a bird of peace hasn't seen these bully bruisers, who are nothing of the sort. They like to pick fights with:


• Bluejays, the noisiest members of family Corvidæ. We don't have the Eastern kind here, no, the Western jays are what happens to the Eastern bluejay after a bizarre transporter accident: one species, the scrub jay, has the Eastern's coloring, but has no bump on his head. The other, the Steller's Jay, has the Eastern bluejay's shape, but that famously-crested head is black, and the body a deep, deep blue. Not that they're really that color anyway (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/000728.html), but Cecil Adams and I digress. The jays have less body mass than the doves, but more attitude. I, of course, am biased in favor of jays when the gangs have their little rumbles.


• A red-tailed hawk. Just once, mind you, and certainly not in it for the seeds. Think "lion at the waterhole, watching the zebra."


• Many red and reddish-gray squirrels. Reds are more aggressive than grays, although The Joy of Cooking would like you all to know that grays are better eating. In the Peninsula and South Bay (area code 650), there was a spreading colony of black squirrels that always made me think of you and the reincarnated Jesuits, although there the legend is that those started as escaped labratory animals from Stanford (possibly, in some rumors, Released by Wacky PETA People).


• And hummingbirds. They're a novelty, not nearly so entertaining as the rest, but I like their sheer improbability and chutzpah.

There, a random digression for your evening. 8-)

-- Lorrie