The Birds!

I have always known what birds were, without knowing much about them.

 Although birds did not visit the rock-hard desert that in blissful ignorance we called the "garden" at 121 Fitzwilliam Street where I was born and lived for more than sixteen years, they risked life and limb from massive feet of the great horses that pulled carts full of coiled wire from the goods yard of the LMS lower down Fitzwilliam Street as they pecked bits of grit from the cobblestones of the roadway.

 Huddersfield town was as full of starlings way back in the Forties as it is now. Wheeling flocks making noisy passage through their brief but harsh lives. Some hate the glossy twitterers, others tolerate them, but most regard them with a benign indifference.

 The old Market Place, and Sparrow Park, as Peel Park on Upperhead Row came to be called, were visited by multitudes of sparrows and pigeons, and there were ducks on Greenhead Park’s now stolen duck pond. Beyond these everyday birds, my avian experience did not extend. I was an ornithological ignoramus

 In my dotage, overwhelmed by the rich and seemingly endless variety of birds that surround our cabin in the woods, I have been compelled to buy a book to identity the feathered visitors to our Montana home.

 Iridescent Stellar’s blue jays, exotic yellow-billed evening grossbills, indescribably beautiful and reverent hawfinches, humble nuthatches, oversized American robins with orange breasts, red-winged blackbirds, pine siskins, owls, crows, woodpeckers from tiny sapsuckers to big red-crested Woody Woodpecker kind, each knocking their morning and evening rat-a-tat-tats on creatulife-givingBald and Golden eagles, black and white crowned sparrows, and other birds of unknown species, end up in our garden sooner or later. The greatest contrast between their birdie natures is spelled out by hummingbirds at one extreme, and chickadees at the other.

 Although both kinds of birds are remarkably tame, inasmuch as they will perch and feed when we stand still by their feeders, and even sit on our fingers to do so, they exhibit diametrically opposed behaviour towards others of their own species.

 Hummingbirds come to drink the sugar water we pour into the bright red feeder and chickadees come for the sunflower seeds in the blue hopper on the veranda railing.

 I say they are tame because when I stand by the hummingbird feeder with my fingers on the perches, the birds, sometimes upwards of ten, will gather around me, whirring their tiny wings around my head, until one or two settle on my fingers to drink the nectar, apparently oblivious to the fact that I eat birds, although I have never eaten any quite so tiny.

 Chickadees are no less reticent, and will feed from the seed tray even when I am leaning over it with my hands on its edge, as though we were old friends. These little birds, the size of house sparrows, live in chattering flocks in the two great trees nearest our cabin.

 Apart from size and colouring, there is one other great difference that stands out between hummingbirds and chickadees. Hummingbirds are vicious little devils who use their long pointed beaks as rapiers to attack other birds feeding where they want to feed.

 Our feeder has three plastic florets through which the little darlings poke their enormously long tongues and lap up the life giving food. Yet, even if two are not occupied, they will demand to feed where a solitary bird is feeding, dive-bombing their target until the perch is vacated. There is something unnaturally human about this behaviour that is as disquieting as it is fascinating.

 In contrast, Chickadees form queues when they are feeding, leaving whichever has occupancy of the feeder tray to remain, unmolested until it flies off with its treasure. Patient chickadees sit on the veranda rails, or perch on the Didgery-Don’t that hangs nearby, or in the rafters of the veranda roof.

 This past Sunday, there was a sinister turn at the hummingbird feeder. To be fair, the rufous hummers returned to our place first, coming a good week before the smaller Calliope variety, and now the black-throated hummingbirds are beginning to make their appearances. They make a splendid display as the sun catches their throat and back feathers, turning what appears to be dull and drab into luminescent flashes of brilliant colour, rivalling the coloured foil around Quality Street chocolates and toffees, reminding me of home delights not available to this exile.

 But these rust jacketed beauties had taken a proprietary interest in our hummingbird feeder, standing, well, perching, they never stand, on the majestic fir that overlooks the feeder. They issued their metallic twits, and swooped down like the Red Baron on any other variety that approached any of the three feeding trumpets.

 Even when I stood almost against the feeder with my arms encircling it, they came to drive off those they considered intruders. Flicking at them with my outstretched fingers did not deter them from executing audacious aerobatics in their foul-tempered hands-off-our-food blitzkrieg.

 Hummingbirds have a reputation for being fearless and pugnacious, but these rufous birds abuse the privilege. Finding it amusing at first, I realised that in our neck of the woods there was little chance for nectar from the local flora, and that a diet of insects alone would not provide them with the incredible amount of energy they use when they are simply hovering, which is exponentially increased when they fly backwards or dart forward at attacking or evading speed that the human eye can be taxed to follow.

 My solution was to stand at the scene of the battle of Britain with the fly swatter in hand and attempt to bat von Richtoven’s craft away so that the smaller and evidently needier species could perch and feed. I was as much use as a chocolate fireguard, so I retired to contemplate the absurd cruelty of animal nature, especially my feathered house guests.

 Reflecting on the discrete conduct of these two avian varieties makes me wonder at the sheer beauty and wonder of the tiny marvels whose virtues are marred by their aggression, in contradistinction to their larger, more civilised kin, the patient and civilised chickadees.

 And I am reminded that it is not fine feathers or clothes that maketh man, but manners, especially the willingness to share with others on equal terms.

 Copyright ? Ronnie Bennett-Bray 2004 - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED