The Bird Tarmac

Changing the windows in the living room altered everything. We had lived here for many years but the new openness with casement windows allowed at least forty percent more sunlight. It also exposed what my wife called "The Bird Tarmac". It's where birds of all sorts met and congregated. We would sit at the window and watch them take off and land. She imagined it was a constant Jimmy Buffet concert and the birds were just living it up.

I had always been infatuated with birds and this really put it into hightail. I especially loved watching out for the hawk. There seemed to be one or two. Maybe a family. I began researching how to attract hawks. Consensus was to attract other birds with bird feeders and in turn lure the hawk to it's prey.

Now living in the city you run the risk of luring a different animal but we took the chance. It was the wrong decision.

With ONE simple bird feeder we attracted mice, squirrels, woodpeckers, doves, at least 1 rat.

I became obsessed with plugging holes as I thought every crevasse a mice would get in. I should have trapped the mice and offered them up to the hawks as sacrifices, but the hawks never bothered to pay us a visit.

We removed the bird feeder after no more than 6 weeks in late spring into summer but the vermin kept coming.

As did the woodpecker who brought two friends and for some ridiculous reason thought pecking the metal fire escape was a good idea. Yes it annoyed us, my wife more. But what kind of deranged woodpecker would do that?

It got weirder.

Crows started hanging on the building east of us looking right into our window. One than three than seven appeared. It was all rather odd. They'd be off and on all day on the building. We would go downtown via the subway and I swear one had followed up above ground. My wife began leaving small gifts of apple cores and carrot sprouts for the crows. They definitely were following us around.

This wasn't the worst thing. No one did stop and chats on the streets. No one even asked about the few crows following me.

The crows eventually lost interest in us after we had gone away for a week and didn't leave enough munchies. They repaid us in bird shit on the fire escape and beak dents on the window but after a few weeks the aggression ended.

I thought. Then every day, every night different birds squawked outside. No program could be completed. No movie watched. I began to go crazy. Wife Goggling how to appease angry crows. All the the links lead back to sad decrepit poems.

Then a sign from the heavens.

A deep hoo, hoo, louder and calmer than all the squawks together. It was meditative. Therapeutic. A beautiful owl had made its home a tree in the back of the buildings. I tried finding it for months. I bought 2 pairs of binoculars for wife and I to watch together. Came up with nada.

I wanted to thank the owl. The aggression from the angry crows was traumatic AF and don't think I could have got over it without its help.

I plead this case to a city park official. He widely grinned when he was asked which meant he must know the owl.

He asks me if I've seen the doves again. I had. He laughs. He tells me the dove has been imitating the owl the whole time. Fooling most of the other birds, especially the crows and us. I'm slack jawed.

I go home and prepare the feed for the doves. A true jester deserves their plate.