Our back yard is quite the busy place, the last few weeks. Herds of birds occupy it in turns. Starlings and grackles feed there, periodically. We’re just as glad they don’t stay and roost, as the collective nouns for the critters, deservedly, are a filth of starlings and a plague of grackles. The birds are fun to watch, though, their dark feathers a striking contrast with the yellow leaves that are now both on the ground and in the trees.
Robins have taken over the property today. They gather in gangs at this time of year, and the back yard is full of the avian entertainers. Each one selects a spot, preferably one deep in leaves, and gets to work. Robins bring showmanship to autumn feeding, each one making a big deal of throwing leaves out of its way. There’s a poof of leaves over here, another one over there, and so on. When the robins are hungry, little leaf geysers pop up everywhere around the yard. No wonder one of the collective nouns for robins is a riot.
And, not only do the robins feed but, to borrow from horse imagery, they are on the muscle and feeling their oats. They fly around the yard at top speed. They zoom along the deck, inches from the surface. They race each other to perches. They are, in fact, reckless. Yikes! One of them just flew into the dining room window. What a noise. Fortunately, the bird didn’t knock itself out. Wham! One just flew into the family room window.
What’s happening here? Window strikes haven’t been a problem in the considerable time we’ve lived here. We had tree work done last weekend, to deal with yet more damage from last winter’s storms. The crew removed dead branches, an entire maple, and an enormous limb of the linden. The yard looks shockingly different to us. Maybe the new sight lines are going to be a problem for the birds.
The red squirrels—those are the small ones that go very fast—are definitely out of sorts. They’ve adjusted to the changes in the trees. They’re ticked at the ongoing bird-gang invasions. The red squirrels are used to ruling the yard, often making the larger, slower fox squirrels move just because they can. Robins are tougher to boss around because, of course, they can fly. Also, they don’t much care what the red squirrels do. One of the little fluff-tails did displace a robin while I watched, but had to mount a stealth operation to do it. It hid under the deck and ran out fast, fast, fast at a bird about eighteen inches away. Startled, the robin moved, but not very far. The squirrel didn’t try again.
Out walking last week, Sue and I found ourselves waiting for the walk light across the street from a dad and two daughters, all of them on bikes. The dad’s bike was a regular bike. The girls had those tiny bikes that didn’t exist when we were kids, and each miniature bicycle had training wheels. The scene was instantly endearing.
What made it more so was the expression on the smaller girl’s face. I’ve seen it before, on another child, my sister Carol. Carol greeted pretty much everything life had to offer with delight, amusement, and zest. Clearly, the petite cyclist did, too. When I thought the sprite couldn’t get any cuter, she noticed her front wheel was further forward than her dad’s and sister’s. She put her little helmeted head down and backed up, going BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP, as if she were a gigantic truck.
After our walk, as I sat in the car, preparing to get underway, I noticed a burly young man raking a yard up the street from Sue’s place. A landscaping truck with a long trailer pulled up in front of that house. I thought it was waiting to turn onto the main street, and it was, but first it needed to pick up the young man.
Between the truck and the young man was a pile of leaves that stretched the length of the property, the fruit of his labor. Should he walk through the pile, thus wrecking it? His face said he didn’t want to do that. Still, the truck driver was waiting. The young man swung both arms back, then forward, bent his knees, and did a standing broad jump that landed him neatly on the other side of the leaves. Whereupon he slid his rake into its receptacle and boarded the truck with a smile on his face.
You just never know what a fall day has in store.
10 November 2023