Search the Blog
Latest Comments
Birds!
Today was birds-in-the-wintergarden day... it started off with a pair of black tits in the morning. When it's sunny outside, I open up at least one of the glass doors to the wintergarden, so that a) the plants get some unfiltered sunlight and b) the place does not overheat too badly. Sometimes, that means that a bird gets in and has a bit of a hard time to get out again, because it tries to fly through one of the closed doors, or one of the non-opening glass panels.
That is not a huge problem unless Madame the Cat is on the premises - then it sometimes ends with a dead bird. Today, though, all the birds got lucky.
The first of the black tits found its way out again straight away, while the second, smartly, sat down on a high rafter for a while. That was out of sight enough for Madame to lose some of her interest, and I could coax her inside (to visit her food bowl instead of looking for a feathery snack she won't eat anyways). After a while, the bird, now much calmer, went to explore the place in search of a way out, and was successful.
A few hours later, there was fluttering in the wintergarden again, and when I went in to take a look, two robins were trying to bore their way through one of the non-opening panes. Madame was outside on some important cat business at that time; I went and found the two birds to be surprisingly chilled. One was, in fact, so chilled that I could just grab it and carry it outside, where it refused to leave my hand and arm for a few minutes. I tried to transfer it to a nice place to sit on, but it hopped back onto my hand several times, and fluttered off only after it had shat on my arm. I've never had a robin on my finger before, and I can tell you that the grasp of these small, delicate bird feet is surprisingly strong, and that the leg length is astonishing.
I'd have loved to take a photo, but all the photo-taking implements were inside, and I didn't want to take the bird in there...
Some minutes later, our cat returned from her important business elsewhere. Good timing, I'd say.
Comments 1
We used to have birds falling down our chimney. Mostly, the fluttering of wings was loud enough to be alerted to this problem. The easiest way to go about, was to close the curtains from all of the non-opening windows before freeing the bird from the woodburner. The kitchen window is best suited to fly out, so that one would be opened. After some confusion they would fly out with hardly a problem. There is only one birdshaped black marking still visible on a curtain.
The birds never were identified, due to the black soot they were covered in.
We had our chimney top changed before we got our first cat. Never had to fight the cat for chimney birds, only for the birds (and living mice) he brought home.