Cape Cod’s Crazy Birds - Chapter One

By TRB

Stick with me long enough to accept this inexplicable, yet to me, clearly probable theory. The theory is this: Birds who either summer or live full time on Cape Cod are crazy. Maybe it is the massive military radar as soon as you cross the bridge to the Cape side. Pave Paws they call it and it looks like a giant satellite dish encased in a building.

But it is probably not the radar. Cape Cod has its own kind of craziness, and it doesn't just reside within the minds of its human inhabitants. For example last year I was driving down Quaker Meeting House Road in the Spring when all of a sudden a brown and orange ball of feathers zoomed right past my nose and onto the front seat. I almost went off the road trying to keep my eyes on this thing, which after a short inspection appeared to be a pair of mating robins. But now they were standing next to me on the car's seat, neither looking happy.

Then bang, they united, turning back into this violent, pumping, pulsating ball of mating, and somehow hurled themselves out the opposite window into a large bush, where they again separated, as one began to chase the other. I pulled over to the side of the road just to include this in my mental notes, Of course the only explanation was that a pair of robins had mated in though one side of my car and out the other, while it was moving. This had never happened to me before. And it hasn't happened since. But the Spring is upon us.

Another time I was driving that same road and a red finch was standing at the side of the road, almost like he was waiting for a bus, or for someone to pick him up. I pulled over, walked over to him, put my hand down and he walked right onto my palm. This was most peculiar. His eye lids were the give away though. They seemed almost welded together. They were stuck closed and he was blind. I drove him to my house. I moistened a towel. I dabbed at his eyes. The lids began to loosen.

Apparently this bird had been drinking at a nearby puddle and a car or truck had splashed water or something sticky in its face. Another theory was that a tourist had emptied a Pepsi or Coke out the window of a car and some of it had hit the finch in the eyes.

I kept up with the towel and slightly warm water until finally his eyes were wide open. He was inspecting every inch of the bathroom. Then he looked up at me. There was a small space between myself and the bathroom mirror. Suddenly he leapt into the air and did the helicopter trick that little birds do so well. That's when they alight, totally off the ground, not moving forward or back, up or down, just hovering-in-place. Seeing that little trick up close had been worth every effort I put into it.

It is not often you will see any creature defy physics. But I would love to have an aerodynamics engineer explain to be how it is that a tiny finch and a whole gambit of usually small birds can actually hover.

The finch only hovered long enough for me to marvel at the feat, then he did another most unlikely thing. He flew onto my shoulder. What I had expected was a panicky urge for flight and escape that might have ended badly if he'd broken his neck, which can easily occur with small birds. But he wasn't panicked. Apparently, he felt that it was my house, and if he just stuck with me, I would let him out. That is exactly what happened. I walked out the front door and he flew off to the rest of his life,

This kind of situation with the eye lids and everything had never happened before, and hasn't since.

I have lived in other parts of this state, other states and all over the world. I have never encountered in such high numbers the various eccentricities found in the resident Cape Cod bird. It isn't species specific, although the chickadee has been trying to establish the reputation as most nuttiest in the 24 years I have been here. The chickadees are posers though, and poor sports to boot. If you decide to feed the chickadees be forewarned, you may have unintentionally signed a contact for life.

Seriously

Chickadees have been known to pick up an empty bird feeder and thrown it at your door. Chickadees have expectations. And if you don't meet them, they will drive you crazy with the noise they can make. They are not afraid of you at all. Once, while I was filling a bird feeder underneath the pine umbrella of a very large tree, a chickadee suddenly alighted on my shoulder and began to inspect my delivery. I found myself hoping there were enough of the kind of seeds he wanted. I was worried that I was not meeting this little noisy thing's needs. See what they manage to do? See what they turn you into?

You can't really let Cape Cod's birds get too close or they will take over your life. I have direct experience in this matter. Almost seven years ago a pair of cat birds moved into the most dangerous bush in the world in the front yard. You might have one of these bushes and know what I am talking about. In the summer they are covered in a coat of leaves, no flowers. In the winter, you get a chance to really look at them. It can be scary.

This is a bush that is maybe six feet tall. It's branches, or the edges of them, are sharp as knives and dotted with two-inch long branches that hold the leaves in the summer. The problem with these two-inch branches is that they are as sharp if not sharper than briars. This is the kind of bush you would not want to back into in the dark. And yet it is this dangerous little bush where the cat birds construct their nest every year, making it nearly impossible for predators to get to their babies. At this point I couldn't even tell you if they were the original cat birds. This pair, which just showed up earlier this week, could be the grandchildren.

If they are, they are more fussy than the parents, whom I met one afternoon as they chased me through my yard trying to kill me. At the time I was not aware of my transgression, but apparently I had walked past the dangerous bush that contained the nest - which contained their babies. It took maybe another year before I could pass that bush without bothering them

Then it happened, an occurrence that must be cat bird legend in these parts. Somehow their little nest had fallen from the razor bush to the ground, where it was vulnerable. A crow, for example could have taken advantage of the clearance between the bottom of the bush and the ground and made off with the babies. I had to be the super hero.

The immediate problem was that the cat bird parents had no idea that my motivation was to save the babies. They must have thought I was going to hurt their babies. But they couldn't move that quickly through the razor bush to get me. The problem for me was the clearance between the ground and the branches was narrow so my back was cut badly. Then the parents had made it far enough inside the tree so they could peck violently on my forehead. Still, against all this, I made it to the nest. Now I had to back up. More cuts, The cat birds were going for my eyes at this point.

Finally I lifted the nest from the ground and wedged it in between the two branches where it had been, slicing and dicing my hands as i sturdied it. I backed out from under the tree expecting the cat birds to attack me full on. But instead they just perched on the tree's branches and watched the wounded man walk away. From that day forward we were pals. I couldn't sit outside at the pool without one or the other landing beside me and talking in that insanely repetitious language of theirs.

A year later during a near-hurricane I took the pool cover which is used in the child's section of the pool and I completely wrapped it around their tree in which their nest was filled with their precious babies. They never even bothered to move out of the nest. They knew I was doing something good for them. That was a strange realization.

Now they have this new bad habit, if the volume of the music from the house at night is too loud, they squeak and bang at the windows. Our relationship is entering a whole new period.

(Editor's Note) This is just one of many chapters I will write on Cape Cod's Crazy birds this summer. If you've had some interesting bird experiences, please get in touch with me. I realize that the birds on Florida's West Coast and in some tropical areas around the world are straight up, out of their minds. But this is about the scrappy Cape Cod sea gull who swoops down on some overweight tourist and grabs an entire Big Mac right out of his mouth. That's what this is about. Robins and blue jays need a chapter of their own of course.)