Nature’s theater is staging a show in my backyard that could end as a romance or a tragedy, and I’m struggling over whether I should intervene to steer the plot.
The show is about birth and death. Of birds.
Act 1: Members of the Boyle family sit peacefully in the living room watching the morning news shows and reading the newspaper (okay, not peacefully) when we hear thumps against a casement window. We turn our heads to see a bird fluttering away from the glass.
This is not one of those kamikaze flights in which a bird soars oblivious to an oncoming window because it sees no reflection and smacks face-first into the glass, which typically leaves our feathered friend dead or flying around in a neck brace. No, this bird comes back for more; it repeatedly approaches from a low angle, smacking the window with its wings as if slapping the glass in the face. The assaults occur intermittently for weeks.
As it so happens, our family has spotted Cardinals hanging around the back yard this spring more so than usual. We’ve also heard more bird music – particularly at dawn, particularly outside my open bedroom window, particularly one hour before my clock radio goes off. I check the web to sample the whistles for birds common to Maryland and conclude these are the songs of the Cardinals or of the Orioles who share the neighborhood. How nice!
Act 2: During the Window Siege we notice a pair of Cardinals – a bright red male and brown, orange-beaked female – hanging out in a pine tree a few yards from the window and hopping on the grass in between. If I were taken before a police lineup of suspects who’ve been trying to break into our house through the windows, I’d finger these two as the culprits.
My investigative journalism skills kick in: I browse “Cardinals” “attack” “windows” and discover that Cardinals attack windows. My sources say they do this because they see their reflections in the glass but, rather than tucking their hair into place like most of us, they mistake the reflection for a threatening bird and attack it in order to protect their breeding and feeding grounds. I get it. Who among us has not sometimes felt flustered by our reflections, especially while breeding?
How cute! We’re going to have a family outside our window, although the brain-damaged parents might need a home visitation nurse.
Act 3: We’ve also noticed more Crows hanging about this spring. I’ve always disliked Crows for their boring black coats and their abrasive caws. (My singing is worse but at least I don’t do it from trees.) Now I find more reason to hate them: I browse “Crows” “eat” “baby birds” and learn that Crows eat baby birds. I must intervene to save the Cardinals!
Veterans of bird wars offer several methods of scaring Crows away from baby birds, including, of course, posting scarecrows. Most enticing is the idea of attacking the Crows. I see myself driving the killers away as the worshipful red family huddles in its nest behind me, as if I’m Wonder Woman – except I’m Marvelous Man, and except I’m using a broomstick lifted from a closet instead of a God Killer Sword drawn from a scared vault, and except I’m thumping a few birds on the head to save birds I like better instead of plowing through warriors to stop a gas attack on Europe. The coincidences freak me out.
Bird war veterans splat all over this dream. They claim Crows are so smart that they recognize faces and so emotionally uptight that they hold grudges. These people swear they’ve been forever harassed by diving Crows after having attacked a member of their brood with everything from guns to sticks, even as the Crows let other family members sit on the deck in peace.
Well, I don’t want a crow gang trying to carry out a contract on my scalp. On top of that, our teenage daughter recently made her mother carry a spider out of the van and place it on the ground rather than squish it like a civilized person would. Justifiable avian homicide appears to be out of the question.
The advice of nature experts is let nature take its course, blah blah blah. They say Crows need to eat, too. And if you save an infant Cardinal from a Crow, it might just get eaten by another animal or die of a horrible disease.
Sure, and it could end up living in Flint. But maybe the Cardinal I save will become a great Cardinal: a father who coaches the soccer team; an inventor; a cardinal.
We’ll never know. Like most tickets to nature’s shows, mine entitles me to watch the play, not direct it.