The starlings have hatched and have taken to the power lines en masse. They swoop down into the yard, into the trees, into the nearby pastures. On some unseen signal, they take flight, making loud swooshing noises as they hold formation, great graceful arcs into the sky or towards their next landing pad. They're beautiful, and yet, they're one of the "nuisance birds."
We have many jays here, too. Those are considered by some "nuisance birds." My father once woke me early in the morning -- or rather he summoned me, as the noise had awakened me -- and instructed me to pick up the feathers that had blown free from the carcasses of all the jays he'd slaughtered with a shotgun. They begin calling out to each other at daybreak. He had a late night drinking and raising hell, and he was none too tolerant of their annoying morning song. So he shot them -- about half a dozen or so. I picked up the feathers, grateful that he'd removed most of the bodies. The neighbor, a "do-gooder" whom my father swore lived to fence him in, called the humane society or some such agency, along with the local police. The police came, gave my father a warning about the discharge of a firearm within a residential area, and my father was satisfied. The birds were gone. What was left of them found a new nesting area.
I don't shoot the birds. I don't mourn the ones lost to my cats, as it's the natural order of things, but I don't shoot them. I feed them, and I watch them. Even the starlings.
Till later....
We have many jays here, too. Those are considered by some "nuisance birds." My father once woke me early in the morning -- or rather he summoned me, as the noise had awakened me -- and instructed me to pick up the feathers that had blown free from the carcasses of all the jays he'd slaughtered with a shotgun. They begin calling out to each other at daybreak. He had a late night drinking and raising hell, and he was none too tolerant of their annoying morning song. So he shot them -- about half a dozen or so. I picked up the feathers, grateful that he'd removed most of the bodies. The neighbor, a "do-gooder" whom my father swore lived to fence him in, called the humane society or some such agency, along with the local police. The police came, gave my father a warning about the discharge of a firearm within a residential area, and my father was satisfied. The birds were gone. What was left of them found a new nesting area.
I don't shoot the birds. I don't mourn the ones lost to my cats, as it's the natural order of things, but I don't shoot them. I feed them, and I watch them. Even the starlings.
Till later....
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