Good evening, Kibitzers! You may remember, from a diary a couple of years ago, that I am plagued by robins. Well, in general they’re not very plague-y, really, but at this time of year, it gets interesting sometimes. Usually it’s quibbling over where to nest, as described in the earlier diary, but this year, there’s a new trick.
On Saturday, late in the afternoon, I was minding my business when I heard loud tapping coming from somewhere in the west end of the house. It was kind of windy, so I figured a tree branch was knocking against a window. It kept going, intermittently, and became more vigorous. At last, I decided I should go look before it got too dark to see anything. I looked out the windows at that end and saw nothing, and then I went outside and looked around, but no branches were near the windows. And anyway, the noise had stopped.
But on Sunday morning, it was back. It wasn’t in my room, so I got up and peeked through the doorway of the office across the hall, and there was a male robin, standing on the window air conditioner and pounding on the window with his beak as if he were auditioning to be a woodpecker. (He’ll flunk, though; he’s too slow.) I burst into the room and shooed him away. I figured it was some kind of nesting behavior and him getting scared off would put an end to his interest in that spot. I was incorrect. I shooed him a few more times, but he never went far, and after a while, he added flying at the window and chest-bumping it, which sounded quite alarming. (I was envisioning dealing with broken glass and a probably-bleeding robin flying around in the house.)
The Cornell Ornithology Lab says:
American Robins are industrious and authoritarian birds that bound across lawns or stand erect, beak tilted upward, to survey their environs.
They don’t mention anything about them breaking into your house, but it does seem like a pretty authoritarian move.
I’m writing on Monday evening. He has kept this up for two full days now (three, I write on Tuesday), plus the Saturday afternoon. My guess is that, even though he can see through the window well enough to see me move, he is also seeing his reflection from some angles. That would explain why he pecks in bursts and then looks quizzically at the window: he’s seeing a phantom male robin invading his territory and trying to attack him. I’m sure he doesn’t get what that surface he’s pecking at is, but the interloper goes away when he shifts position, and then as soon as his back is turned, boom! There he is again! The nerve!
So now, I would very much like Robin Toxic Masculinity Season to be over. I see him hopping around the yard with a female robin sometimes, so I am hopeful he’ll move on to nest-building soon.
On the subject of “the early bird catches the worm”, the damn bird gave me an earworm that woke me up in the middle of the night. Which I guess is appropriate for Sting’s Jungian fisher-king dream.
Birds on the roof of my mother's house
No stones to chase them away
Birds on the roof of my mother's house
Will sit on my own roof some day
They fly at the window, they fly at the door
Where does she get the strength to fight them anymore?
Counts all her children as a shield against the pain
Lifts her eyes to the sky like a flower to the rain
Yet a third hurricane season starts June 1, and Puerto Rico is still struggling to recover.
It is Day 587 since Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico.
PLEASE FOLLOW Denise Oliver Velez and the SOS Puerto Rico group for the latest news about developments in Puerto Rico and the USVI (new diary here). Denise generally collects resonant tweets at the top of her comment threads, as well, and in the APR’s thread most mornings, to make it easy to retweet. If you tweet or FB, please share something about Puerto Rico and USVI regularly.
PUERTO RICO and USVI DISASTER RELIEF DONATION LINKS
The Daily Kos community has its own project: Puerto Rico resident Bobby Neary (newpioneer) leads a small team dedicated to helping a specific rural elder who was left by the storms without power, water, a roof, or any belongings but a moldy mattress. If you like to see concrete results, this is the project for you. See newpioneer’s diaries for ways to help. See this one in particular, and this comment with photos. See also his lovely and heartbreaking poem.
(🌅 = most recently recommended by Denise)
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