Blue Jays | Frank Scoblete

The Big Birds

I will admit that songbirds can be lovely, quick-flighted and spectacularly colorful, but I have to tell the truth: I love the big birds—the predators, the raptors. There is something truly wonderful watching an eagle or hawk eye its prey and then descend from the clouds at lightning speed to nail his or her breakfast, lunch or dinner at that very moment.

As we were being driven up a Norwegian mountain, my wife, the Beautiful AP, and I saw a Golden Eagle soar high above us. He wasn’t flapping his wings; he was being driven by an airshaft. His speed was impressive.

His descent was awesome. We couldn’t see what animal he was hunting because the valley below was so deep, but I am guessing he enjoyed his meal.

Now, many readers are aware that the latest theory of bird evolution traces birds back to the dinosaurs. Yes, that little Blue Jay in your backyard eating the food you’ve laid out for him could be a direct evolutionary offshoot of the Tyrannosaurus Rex; after all, Blue Jays have been known to sever other birds’ heads! They take no prisoners.

The largest flying birds on our planet at the moment belong to the Albatross family. Their wing span can reach 12 feet. That’s impressive. The best eagles can reach is somewhere between six to seven feet. Still quite impressive.

Still these modern birds cannot match the prehistoric pterosaurs. These flying beasts had wing spans at times over 34 feet. These aerial brutes could weigh up to 500 pounds! Think of the power required to launch and maneuver 500 pounds.

The pterosaur could descend from the skies and eat animals that weighed close to 100 pounds. That correct; an entire class of grade schoolers would be in trouble if these monsters still existed today.

Both cadaverous and full-figured fashion models gliding down runways would be easy pickings for these monsters.

In my mind’s eye, I see the pterosaurs hurtling to earth like a comic book antagonist that Stan Lee created. These brutes would thud, crash, boom onto terrified victims, until a superhero could save the day.

There is one little wrinkle in the pterosaur family, one fact I must now disclose—winged as they were, they were not birds! Thus, our modern birds have no evolutionary relationship to them. They were more like bats than birds and scientists believe they were wiped out in the great meteor disaster some 66 million years ago.

But I do like to look at pictures of them; the great giants of the past. And perhaps one day, they will show up in a comic book.

Frank Scoblete’s web site is www.frankscoblete.com. Frank’s books are available from Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, e-books, and at bookstores.

War and Peace

I spend many hours writing in my office, where I also look out at the trees and bushes and the astonishing number of birds that come to our three feeders. I can’t actually identify them all. But I am learning…slowly.

These three feeders are right outside the windows of my office and since my office is basically three-quarters windows I have a great view of nature every day.

My wife the Beautiful AP likes to go into the backyard and take pictures of the birds (and trees and bees and plants and bushes and butterflies) but yesterday was a different day. AP was busy going over some pictures she had taken earlier when I saw them at the feeders, two (what I think were) grackles, one black, the other gray.

The gray one stayed on the top bar of the feeder away from the other birds while the black one went to the grain in the feeders, shoving aside the sparrows, and put some feed in his beak and flew back to the gray one and fed her beak-to-beak. He did this over and over again. I called the Beautiful AP over to take a look and maybe get a picture of this.

I know that mother birds and often father birds will feed their chicks in their nests but these two birds were basically the same size so I assumed they were both adults and since males tend to be more colorful than female birds I made the assumption that the magnificent black bird was male and the somewhat less magnificent gray bird was female.

“I’ve never seen anything like this with two adult birds,” said AP attempting to take a picture through the window.

These two (lovebirds? mated birds? courting birds?) continued in this fashion for about fifteen minutes and then they both flew away.

“What do you think?” I asked AP.

“The only thing I know,” she replied, “is you can’t get a decent picture through a window.”

She hadn’t. Too bad. What the heck was actually going on? Was I right in some of my assumptions?

A while later I saw her tromping around the backyard with her sunhat on her head and the camera at her eyes. I wondered what she was photographing.

I found out when she came into the house about a half hour later.

“I got two blue jays at war,” she said. “They were really going after each other. First a cardinal attempted to scare off the first blue jay but the jay just lunged for the cardinal and the cardinal flew away really fast.”

“Blue jays are tough birds,” I said. “I can see they probably evolved from dinosaurs a few million years ago. They’ve got that attitude.”

“Well, the cardinal turned tail. Literally,” she said.

“Our lovebirds didn’t come back,” I said.

“No,” she said, “but then another blue jay came over and these two blue jays were not friends. They went at each other along the fence. I think I might have gotten a decent picture of them going at it. I would think those two were not lovebirds unless it was violent love. They’re aggressive.”

Yes, they are. I have heard and read many stories where blue jays have attacked people for getting too close to the nest – like about 30 feet! They are dangerous birds and when they come to the feeder most of the other birds get away, to a different feeder or altogether out of there.

I did see one blue jay get killed when a cat nailed him and scattered the blue jay’s feathers and guts under the bird feeders. Okay, I admit, blue jays can’t defeat cats.

I have been now watching birds in a somewhat serious manner for two years – more or less – and they fascinate me. First thing, they can fly! Give me my choice of a single superpower and flying would be it. I don’t need super strength because if someone were bothering I could – snap! – just up and fly away, just like that cardinal did.

So today I experienced two aspects of the bird world; love and warfare. Some relationships combine them. Just like Frank Sinatra sang, “Love and warfare; go together like a horse, carriage and carnage.” AP and I are thankful that our relationship is love minus the warfare, once I learned that in marriage one person is always right…and the other is the husband.

Frank’s latest books are Confessions of a Wayward Catholic!; I Am a Dice Controller and I Am a Card Counter. All of Frank’s books are available from Amazon.com, Kindle, Barnes and Noble, e-books and at bookstores. Read Frank’s ongoing series about his teaching experiences in School Scobe.

Camera Shy

“They are smart,” said my wife the Beautiful AP. “This can’t be just coincidence.”

I agreed with her. We were talking about Hooded Mergansers but such applies to almost all birds. They are smart.

Too many ornithologists come down on the side of birds just being creatures of instinct with no real intelligence. My wife and I have two parrots and let me tell you, they are both intelligent. In fact, more often than not, they outsmart me. Their goal in a day is to manipulate me; my goal is to be left alone so I can do my work. They often – quite often – win.

I guess you can say that for the Beautiful AP and for me, birds have passed our version of the Turing Test. This test was created by Alan Turing to determine if a being were actually intelligent or just a machine of some kind.

According to Turing, if a machine responds as if it were intelligent, then indeed it is intelligent. Anyway that’s what Turing’s test tries to show. I’ve just extended it to animals and birds. I agree that there are instincts (or unconscious programs) but intelligence is there, in some cases (as in parrots) that intelligence is pretty high. I assume other animals pass the Turing Test too. I am not saying animal/bird intelligence is equivalent to human intelligence; just that those minds are working.

“So why can’t I ever get Hooded Mergansers?” AP whined.

She was right. Every time we saw Hooded Mergansers they were always on the other side of the lake. We’d then walk around the lake – even a far walk – and as soon as we got to where the Hooded Mergansers had been, those rotten birds were now on the side of the lake from where we just came.

This didn’t happen just once or twice but multiple times in multiple places both on Long Island and in Cape May. Come on, they had to know they were busting the Beautiful AP’s chops. Maybe these birds had some kind of psychic connection to each other as in, “That dumb photographer is heading to Cape May from Long Island. Let’s screw around with her as our LI brethren have done. Awk! Awk!” (“Awk! Awk!” is the derisive laugh of birds.)

Next, we have a couple of Cardinals who come to our three feeders quite often. Cardinals are magnificently colored creatures; red as red can be – the males that is. The females are far plainer, but still quite pretty.

But the Beautiful AP cannot get a picture of this magnificent male bird. He will be on the feeder, beaking his food, when AP positions the camera to capture him in all his glory and then – the stinking bird will scoot over to the other side of the feeder where he can’t be seen.

“Damn! Damn it!” says AP.

The bird now peaks its head around the feeder at her. You can see it looking at her. But as soon as she lifts the camera, Mr. Cardinal scoots around back again. This does not happen with the host of Sparrows, the many Blackbirds, Blue Jays, Woodpeckers, Grackles, Mourning Doves, Tufted Tit Mice, and Black Capped Chickadees. These birds just eat and swiftly fly away when a cat crouches to kill them. No, just those miserable male Cardinals play this nerve-wracking game.

When the Cardinal was in a bush or tree, every time she lifted the camera, the damn bird would scoot behind a leaf, a branch, a feeder – anything to hide himself.

No one should ever think a bird’s brain is just a birdbrain.

AP is undeterred. She plans to have an exhibit of her bird photos in less than a year and vows to have great shots of Cardinals, Hooded Mergansers and other smarty-pants birds in the display. If I know my wife, she will prevail.

“’You must do the things you think you cannot do,’” AP said thunderously, quoting Eleanor Roosevelt.

I could be a smarty-pants myself. “’I can resist anything but temptation,’” quoting Oscar Wilde. Then I poured myself a drink.

[Read Frank Scoblete’s books I Am a Card Counter: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Blackjack, I Am a Dice Controller: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Craps and Confessions of a Wayward Catholic! All available from Amazon.com, on Kindle and electronic media, at Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores.]