The damn raccoon is back

[Yo_Mama]

119. Birds are really very smart - the word "birdbrains" is just wrong

Even small species seem to recognize individual humans and change their behavior according to whom they're dealing with. And larger species, such as geese and other waterbirds, are really astonishingly social and do interact with other species.

I would never want to tame a wild animal or bird, but it does fascinate me that even wild ones are so very likely to adapt to us. Sometimes it does seem to be curiosity. Sometimes we are useful.

There was a wren that I was watching around the house in the NE, because it was a wren that didn't seem to belong here. Most mornings I go out on the porch here really early and sit with my coffee and just watch the action. Eventually I figured out that this wren just had to be a hybrid between a species that is supposed to have its range limit several hundred miles away and the local species.

We first got acquainted because it would fly into the porch and look for insects, and it was getting cranky if I was there when it wanted to work the place. So it would squawp at me very indignantly and then scold. Well, I talked back to it. Wrens seem to have an astonishingly broad vocal range. Eventually we worked out kind of a dialogue, and then it accommodated to my presence and would fly in and work the perimeters of the porch while I was there with my coffee watching the other birds, rabbits, fox, groundhogs, squirrels, deer and so forth. It's an active location, which is one reason it's so fun to be out there.

The next year we had a series of bad storms in the spring, and in very late spring Wren appeared again with a normal-looking wren whom I will call Spouse, and they started building a nest in the porch. It was close to the interior roof and in the middle of the porch, built on a rack on the interior wall about a foot from the house door leading into the porch. I always sit on a stool right next to the door, so this nest would literally be about two feet above my head.

Well, Spouse did not like me being there at all. Spouse would have hysterics when she would want to come in with nest stuff and find me there. So it got noisy for a while, and eventually Spouse would just fly into the dogwood that's right outside the porch on one side and make an irritated announcement to tell me not to be too long about it. Wren would just fly in and hop around waiting for me to go so it could fly into the Top-Secret nest location right above my head. And we would chatter to each other pretty companionably. I tried to move the stool to a less obstructive location in the porch, but Wren did not like it. Wren would fly in and dance around it and holler. So after two days I moved it back to the original location, at which Wren calmed down.

They had gotten the nest about half done when another huge vicious storm with really high winds hit unexpectedly. I remember looking out there thinking "I hope the wrens made it in okay."

The next morning I went out to survey the havoc (there were tree branches down all over) with my coffee, and discovered Wren sort of huddled on the porch floor. Wren looked stunned, and when I whistled to Wren no reply. I was greatly distressed and I thought I heard Spouse sort of calling to Wren from the dogwood with this strange sort of cheeping, so I immediately went inside. Well, I watched, and poor Wren stayed just sitting there. By afternoon Wren was hopping around a little, but not much, and Spouse was outside on that side of the porch calling and hopping around in a frenzy.

I took out a very shallow bowl of water and some tiny fragments of hamburger and noodle, and then I scouted around and found a couple of insects and dumped those right outside the porch. I didn't think there was much hope. That night I shut the sliding doors almost totally (leaving a wren-sized slit) so nothing could get Wren on the floor, and when I went out in the morning Wren was moving around more. I opened up the doors and that afternoon when I came back Wren was gone.

Well, in a couple of days they were both back in action building the nest. But now when Wren would fly in, if I were there, Wren would hop around the floor and chatter quite a bit to me. Spouse still didn't like me, but would fly in past my head. About a week and a half later they stopped the frenzied flying in and out with building material, so I figured eggs. Wren took to sitting right by me in the morning (there's a chair right next to the stool) and chattering. I mean, LIKE SIX INCHES FROM ME. And talk? It was this whole huge discussion. I bet I heard every bit of hot wren gossip on the whole East Coast.

Then the eggs hatched, and I thought I'd leave them in peace. The first morning I didn't go out there wren flew up on the screen door leading into the porch and hopped all up and down it calling and hollering. I thought Wren just wanted to know where I was, so I took my coffee to the chair next to the door and did the whole whistle recognition call thing, but Wren would not get off the screen until I went out there.

So now I was drinking coffee with two wrens flying into a nest just a couple feet away from my head. They were pretty busy of course, but Wren would pause for a bit to talk to me.

About a week later I heard a whole lot of bird squawk, and I went out in the afternoon to the porch to see what the matter was. It had been getting noisier the last few days, and I had heard other wrens in the dogwood. I figured they might be the first family, which often helps to raise the second family..

I sat out there for a bit, Wren was flying through the porch and around giving alarm calls, and then I saw a feral cat hunkered down in the vines on a steep slope about ten feet from the porch door. Light dawned. After thinking about it for a minute, I got up and headed slowly toward the cat. The cat hunkered down, thinking that Dumbass couldn't see it under the vines (it's a real thicket).

About four feet away from the porch, I heard this large flutter of wings and and explosion of wren hollering, and I glanced up. Wren was zooming around my head, Spouse was bringing up the rear, and there were at least four other wrens rounding the corner of the porch from the other side where the dogwood was. The large flightless emu-like creature and the Wren Defense Squad continued toward the cat, who got the oddest look on its face and finally burst from cover and fled when the collective defense forces (ground and air) were about four feet from its hiding place. Pursued, mind you, by a zooming screaming air-squad of righteous wren fury, and the strangest looking bird ever seen by feline eyes.

No matter how much I think about it, I can't interpret the whole sequence as not having been planned by Wren from the first. That's why Wren got so upset when I moved the stool. Wren's carefully planned nest defense fortifications were being disrupted. This makes me contemplate my own native hideousness - I must be a sort of emu-gargoyle in the eyes of a wren.