Entertaining Birds

Birds can be so entertaining.  For a time here at our townhome on the west coast of Florida, I'd been regularly awakened at about 5 am each day by a show-off mockingbird in the tree just outside our bedroom window.  It's a good thing that I'm a morning person, and that I wake in good humor, and that Greg can sleep through the racket of the trash truck in the neighborhood across from us, lifting a dumpster, emptying it, and crashing it to the pavement.   A few birds wouldn't even register on his noise tolerance gizmo. 


I get the litany of song snippets as if the fellow is saying "If you think that was a good one, just wait till you hear this!"  Then follows song-hopping with chirping, cooing, peeping, warbling, trilling, with two- and three-part melodies (maybe a calliope song slipping in there). 


A hedge borders the drive along the front of our building;  when the lawn service trims the greenery so that it becomes a compact shelf, often a Great White Egret stands atop it, with his long thin neck stick-straight like a vertical swiveling periscope, watching for the movement of the disturbed insects.  Then in a very slow forward movement, his head pivots down so that his outstretched neck is about ten o'clock to the hedge, and in a ballet movement, he lifts one skinny knobby backward-bending leg ever so slooooowly and steps forward, in a comical slow-motion creeping.  

Great White Egret
Picture taken from our (2nd floor) living room window

Up above the hedge, we've spotted an osprey sitting on a decorative 15-foot streetlight, skulking, full of menace (my perception), eyes-darting, looking for mammalian side-dishes to his usual saltwater meals. Feels kind of creepy knowing I'm being watched, so if I'm out there, I just keep moving.  Ospreys aren't as big as eagles, but they're very aggressive hunters and the local ones have effectively contained out of the ospreys' hunting area our resident American Bald Eagle couple that lives a few minutes' walk right down our road.  Our friends Roy and Sue aren't so entertained by "their" osprey who enjoys perching on their sailboat's mast -- doing what birds do, plus eating fish and making all kinds of a mess.   


Back on the subject of mockingbirds, on our sailing trip to Ocracoke Island off the coast of North Carolina,  Captain Roy, wife Sue, Greg and I, while there, went on an island walk to the lighthouse;  our attention was snagged by some squawking and rustling.  We looked above a large full-leafed tree and discovered the antics of a male mockingbird in some kind of pre-mating performance.  The object of his desire remained hidden from us, but she must have been some kind of wonderful for the effort he was making -- shooting straight up from the top of the tree about ten feet, shrieking, wings flapping, body flipping and twisting in an aerial show, back to the leafy branches, and then up again, over and over.  It was almost as if he had a tiny trampoline hidden from our view, that was launching him above the treetop.  We watched throughout his performance;   I'm not sure what good he would be as a suitor after all the energy he expended to impress the object of his ardor. 


I've got far more funny bird stories -- (ask me sometime about the Hilton Head seagull that pooped in Greg's soup) -- but I suppose I'd better pace myself.  Wouldn't want you to think that I've gone all birdbrained.