Outside My Window
I get lots of pleasure from the small dramas that play out just beyond my kitchen and dining room windows.
Yesterday I saw two newly-fledged barn swallows on the clothesline. As Joel said, "They look like a bad-picture version of the adults." The colors are less bright and shiny--somehow just a bit mousy-looking. And the sides of their beaks still have a newly-minted pale yellow tone. But they are gamely trying out their new freedoms and skills. Mom and Dad swoop by and, in a very fast hand-off, stuff food into their mouths. Between times they do a lot of tipping forward and jerking backward, seeming to narrowly avert being upended--repeatedly.
Yesterday the juvenile on the line closest to me tried out the turn-about maneuver. At one point I looked out and saw that he was facing the opposite direction from earlier. Then later, I saw him, with much flapping and fluttering, turn around, three times, in rapid succession. I think he was showing off. Look Ma. See what I can do!
When any of the cats stroll by, the adult birds go into a frenzy of dive-bombing and angry chattering. When I heard a bird fuss yesterday, I looked up to see a perfectly harmless tiny orange and white kitten, just big enough to have ventured out of the nest. It was under the cedar tree with its mother, and looking up as if totally mystified. What makes those silly birds act like that?
This morning the Western Kingbirds that have a nest in one of the trees south of the house were totally panicked about something I couldn't quite see. No cats were in evidence. Then a few minutes later I saw a squirrel hunkered down at the outer end of a large dead branch that got lodged in a horizontal position on its way down. His tail was curved tightly over the top of his back, and he clung tightly to the branch he was on. I would have hunkered down too if I was being attacked by those noisy flying feathered missiles.
One drama I was glad to have missed is the one that happened in the wheat field when Lowell accidentally drove over a litter of kittens with the big combine tire. While we have no need of more cats at the moment, I was sorry for the trauma of the experience. He never saw them until he saw them flattened in the muddy tire track.
Last Saturday Joey had discovered them in the uncut wheat and came in for a box to put them in. We put the box in the garage and waited around till we saw the mother come and claim them. She must have moved them back to the wheat field after that, into a part that had not been cut. Why she thought that was a good place for them is beyond me.
I think there are probably some life lessons in these nature vignettes. Maybe something about providing adequate protection for your offspring--keeping them in a safe place, warding off predators (but discerning rightly between real and imagined threats), and letting them take flight when the time is right, even then offering fly-by support. I'll have to remember these lessons.
Yesterday I saw two newly-fledged barn swallows on the clothesline. As Joel said, "They look like a bad-picture version of the adults." The colors are less bright and shiny--somehow just a bit mousy-looking. And the sides of their beaks still have a newly-minted pale yellow tone. But they are gamely trying out their new freedoms and skills. Mom and Dad swoop by and, in a very fast hand-off, stuff food into their mouths. Between times they do a lot of tipping forward and jerking backward, seeming to narrowly avert being upended--repeatedly.
Yesterday the juvenile on the line closest to me tried out the turn-about maneuver. At one point I looked out and saw that he was facing the opposite direction from earlier. Then later, I saw him, with much flapping and fluttering, turn around, three times, in rapid succession. I think he was showing off. Look Ma. See what I can do!
When any of the cats stroll by, the adult birds go into a frenzy of dive-bombing and angry chattering. When I heard a bird fuss yesterday, I looked up to see a perfectly harmless tiny orange and white kitten, just big enough to have ventured out of the nest. It was under the cedar tree with its mother, and looking up as if totally mystified. What makes those silly birds act like that?
This morning the Western Kingbirds that have a nest in one of the trees south of the house were totally panicked about something I couldn't quite see. No cats were in evidence. Then a few minutes later I saw a squirrel hunkered down at the outer end of a large dead branch that got lodged in a horizontal position on its way down. His tail was curved tightly over the top of his back, and he clung tightly to the branch he was on. I would have hunkered down too if I was being attacked by those noisy flying feathered missiles.
One drama I was glad to have missed is the one that happened in the wheat field when Lowell accidentally drove over a litter of kittens with the big combine tire. While we have no need of more cats at the moment, I was sorry for the trauma of the experience. He never saw them until he saw them flattened in the muddy tire track.
Last Saturday Joey had discovered them in the uncut wheat and came in for a box to put them in. We put the box in the garage and waited around till we saw the mother come and claim them. She must have moved them back to the wheat field after that, into a part that had not been cut. Why she thought that was a good place for them is beyond me.
I think there are probably some life lessons in these nature vignettes. Maybe something about providing adequate protection for your offspring--keeping them in a safe place, warding off predators (but discerning rightly between real and imagined threats), and letting them take flight when the time is right, even then offering fly-by support. I'll have to remember these lessons.
posted by Mrs. I at
10:29 AM
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