Category Archives: Birds

I think that in all of the chaos of the last six weeks, this particular bizarre incident of terror got completely overlooked. Boy, if that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is!

Back on July 10th I we were in escrow, but still living in the old house in West Hills. The Long-Suffering Wife had left for the morning, I was down the hall in my work-from-home office, and the house was filled with boxes and stuff waiting to go into boxes.

I heard a crash of some sort from down the hall, in the kitchen or living room. Being alone in the house and the sound not being something like someone smashing in a door or window to force entry, I figured something had been piled up in an unstable manner and had crashed over to the floor. I would deal with it later.

Then came another bang. And another crash. I came to the conclusion that I was NOT alone in the house.

When I went to investigate, I found that the kitchen had been invaded by mourning doves.

At the moment I had no clue how they had gotten in. All doors and windows were closed. (Later, having reviewed the view from a NestCam, I came to the conclusion that they probably came down the chimney by accident. Drunk? Fermented berries? Or just stupid and clumsy? Both?)

This one was fairly calm. I put a towel over it, picked it up, took it outside, and let it go.

This one I found in the kitchen sink and I figured it would be a breeze to drop a towel over it, trap it in the sink, and repeat the take outside & release strategy.

WRONG!

I never did figure out what its major malfunction was, but I spent fifteen minutes chasing it around the kitchen before I finally got the drop on it. There was much panicked flying up into the eyes (mine) and flapping of wings in my face. I know that we’re in drastically different weight classes and that no one on the planet has ever been killed by a mourning dove, but there’s a first time for everything and I didn’t want it to be me with the funny headstone.

When I finally succeeded in getting it outside I realized that I was now twenty minutes late for a Zoom call with my boss, his boss, our banker, and multiple members of our Board. OOPS!

It’s not quite a “my dog ate my homework” moment, but I’m sure it wasn’t a story that was on anyone’s Bingo card that morning.

For years the crows have ignored all of the bird seed thrown out into the yard. But the cookies and grapes that have been thrown out recently were a whole different thing. Now that the cookies are gone and I don’t have any grapes to share at the moment, at least one of the crows has put two and two together and gotten “breakfast” as the answer.

This dude’s huge.

Based on size, I thought that it was a raven, but the Merlin app says it’s a crow.

It’s not eating the little seeds, but the sunflower seeds and remaining bits of cookie are fair game.

The squirrels are surpisingly unbothered by this large black critter moving in on their bird seed racket. The juncos, finches, and mourning doves take off like a bat out of hell when the crow shows up, but the squirrels just ignore it.

The critter that DOES pay attention to the crow is the mockingbird. Mortal enemies, the mockingbirds are constantly mobbing it and buzzing it to drive it off. The crow in turn ignores them, but the mockingbirds scare the crap out of the squirrels.

It’s a circle of life thing, I guess.