The world smells fabulous these days. Lilacs, peonies, and irises are all in bloom, lending their scents to the pervasive perfume of spring. In addition, we’ve had a lot of rain, and the earth itself smells fecund, lush. This is a smell my sisters and I love, having grown up in a land of lake and marsh and well-being. If the sense of all things being possible has a scent, this is it.
A sound suggested a whole new line of thought this morning, while the dog and I were out walking. It was a tiny, tentative pecking sound. And, of course, it makes sense. Baby woodpeckers have to be taught how to feed themselves, just like other baby birds. Only, whereas a parent robin may say, “Listen for what you want to eat, then pull it out and eat it,” a parent woodpecker must have to insert an instruction along the lines of, “Now hit the tree as hard as you can, over and over, with your bill. Here, Mommy and Daddy will show you how.”
On another walk this week, we were present for more parental instruction, this time a mama squirrel to her three babies. There seemed to be two salient points. One was predator identification: “That’s a dog. Dogs cannot be trusted.” Two was taking evasive action: “Notice how we just climbed this tree. Now keep moving. Dogs can jump. Follow me.”
She led them along a small branch and onto a larger one. Two of the babies trailed her. The third one grasped a different small branch and leapt to Mama’s branch. Whether the jumper was the eldest of the litter or just a little daredevil wasn’t clear, but I’m pretty sure Mama Squirrel rolled her eyes.
On the same walk, Rascal and I passed a sign by the Thurston woods. It has a little shingled roof to shelter passersby who stop to consult it. And there, standing on top of the little roof, was a big goose. For the last few years, there’s been a goose in the area that likes to sit on roofs. Maybe the bird tends toward cold feet, and the sun on shingles warms its webbing.
Heretofore, I’d only spotted this goose on buildings three or four stories tall. It dwarfed the sign in the woods. Maybe it was planning how to pass the habit along to future goslings, starting with the smallest, lowest roofs and working up from there. Maybe it wanted a moment alone. Maybe its feet were cold.
The week’s real drama took place at my favorite no-name pond along Green Road. I always pause there to see what’s going on, and yesterday morning, swallows were the stars of the show. Swallows feed on the fly, picking insects out of the air. The birds are masters of flight, fast and acrobatic.
The weather was cold and damp yesterday. I had my hood up as I watched the swallows. Suddenly, two swallows passed me, just above eye level, on either side of my hood. They had no quarrel with me; I was just in their flight path. Everything was fine.
Until the same two swallows buzzed a male red-winged blackbird sitting on a cattail at pond’s edge. Again, the swallows’ behavior wasn’t directed at anything except insects, but the blackbird decided to take offense. What to do with all that injured pride? It couldn’t retaliate against the swallows. They were still at the pond, but the blackbird would have had to catch them first, and that wasn’t going to happen. Another red-winged blackbird, lower down the pecking order? Not another blackbird in sight.
So the blackbird, weighing in at an ounce or two, went after two Canada geese that were floating peacefully near his chosen cattail! Even a small Canada goose outweighs a red-winged blackbird by a factor of about a hundred, and these geese weren’t small. The irate blackbird didn’t care. Someone had to suffer for his disrespect.
The geese weren’t startled. It was more like they’d noticed some insect was bothering them. In any case, they paddled a few feet away to a more pleasant spot on the pond, and the blackbird returned to his cattail. Honor had been served.
I’d had no idea that the pecking order, the dominance hierarchy among a flock of birds, had an interspecies counterpart. The geese didn’t seem to know about it either. But either the blackbird knew about it, or he came up with it on the spot. The geese may or may not felt they’d been given what for. My guess is no. The swallows, the lovely swallows, were oblivious.
23 May 2025