I have a pet peeve.
Actually, I have many, including a dislike of photinia hedges and drivers in ferry traffic who pretend they can’t see you waiting there as they roll to a stop in front of you. But today we’ll focus on a literal pet peeve, one I was reminded of while enjoying my morning coffee on the deck. Birds don’t belong in cages.
The reason is blindingly obvious. Unless you’re keeping penguins, emus, or domestic fowl, birds are born to fly. It’s what they do; it’s what they are. It’s the essence of their existence and a source of wonder and envy to us earthbound creatures. Keep a bird in a cage and you’ve denied Picasso his paintbrushes and Babe Ruth his bat. You might as well lobotomize a member of Mensa.
If you love the company of birds, feed them and they will come. Boy, will they ever. Invest in a bag of sunflower seed and a hummingbird feeder and you’ll soon discover that birds are pigs with wings.
Ever since I began scattering seed on the handrails of our deck, we’ve been treated to a veritable Peyton Place (Google it, you under-forty types) of bird behavior.
Hummingbirds are weightless wisps of belligerence. They spend their summers drinking nectar, eating aphids (I hope) and engaging in aerial combat. The crazy little things overwinter here now. During last December’s week of snow and arctic temperatures we brought the feeders out of storage in an attempt to save the chilled-but-unchastened creatures from becoming hummer-cubes. Each of three feeders was claimed by a tiny tyrant who did nothing all day but guard its territory, suck up sugar, and try to not freeze to the branch.
Late summer is an especially fine time to feed the birds. In the time it took to sip that cup of coffee, I counted seven species at the bird buffet. The nuthatches are my favorites; for one thing, they’re brave little beasts. Coming to within an arm’s length, they regard me with a beady eye, then proceed to pick through the seed like a foodie at a fruit stand. Delightfully, they mutter to themselves while making their selection (“too small…too light…really, whatever happened to quality?”).
The chickadees are adorable, but they tend to land and, upon seeing me, let out an avian “eek!” and flutter away, only to repeat the process a few seconds later.
Fledglings are plain funny. They’re easy to spot in flight, maneuvering, as they do, like rudderless aircraft. Some of them are a terrible nuisance to their parents, demanding the seed be shelled and placed directly in their fat little mouths (embodying the attitude of some adult humans). They shake their feathers and beg, often cheeping persistently. The trick, I think, is for the parents to make their getaway before the chicks learn to fly well enough to keep up.
Of course, all this free food has encouraged some of the bolder birds to set up house next to the restaurant. One particular junco has for years insisted on making her nest in one or the other inconvenient spot. Her favorite is my greenhouse.
Never mind that I’m always wandering in and out. Never mind that it can get hot enough to kill eggs and chicks. Even screen doors couldn’t keep her out, a trick that baffled me until I saw her pop in through the automatic vent when it louvered open in the heat of the day.
When thwarted in this insane plan – as she has to be every year – she settles for a fuchsia basket or another potted plant by the front door of the house.
As soon as her nest is built and the eggs laid, she starts a peevish tongue-clucking at anyone who comes near. The result is an incessant ticking, the auditory version of Chinese water torture.
Can anyone suppose the feathered diners on my deck to be better off in a cage? Certainly there’s no safety in living wild and occasionally a hawk also comes to dine.
For the most part, however, the birds I foolishly think of as mine spend their days eating and singing and bickering – and most of all, they fly.
Wendy is a Kingston native who wonders why anyone would want to live anywhere else. See more of her work at www.wendytweten.com.
