Short Blog between Work

For those that know me, you know I work from home....So as I sit here in my lonely writers garret, as I like to quote Harry Chapin, I feel like I spend more time chasing away birds than I do working. 

I have a second floor office that overlooks the feeders....ah, perfect, right? Sort of. ....  I just filled up the feeders and Deb got on my case about going outside and filling them while still in my PJ's after being sick for 5 days. Oh well, birds have to eat too.

Anyhow...the feeders are full and here I am  working away. I notice at first a solitary junco...then another to fill in a gap on the feeder. Then another etc. No problem. Cute....I can always remember what Pete Dunne said in his retirement about just wanting to sit back and observe the little birds...the juncos etc. They lend so much to view.

So juncos abound. But then....what the heck. There is this grackle on the feeder. Come on man. First I do not understand how your 'weight' alone doesn't shut down my feeder as it is one of those 'sliding kinds'  that shut down if a squirrel (egads!) gets on. But the grackle is there so I get up out of my chair and bang on the window. It leaves.

It returns.... I bang on the window again and it leaves.

It returns....now with a friend or two. Or three...or really there must be 100 grackles and blackbirds out there. Come on....I have that food for the juncos. Skat.... I open the window and they fly off. Sort of....Just to the neighboring tree. So for the next 30 minutes we play this game. I am 'pretending to work' and they are just staring at me thru the tree limbs -- just waiting for the time my eyes are on the computer, and then...wham...they are back at it. 5-6 of them find their way to the feeder why dozens are below catching the droppings.

Get out of here....this 'food' is for my juncos. Eventually after 45 min of tag, they leave. But I need to get a shower and I know they will be there, I just know it. Does a tree make noise when it falls in the forest if no one is looking? Do grackles attack my feeder when I am in the shower and no one is looking?

So....birds are birds and they all need to eat. But why are we birders so particular about who gets to eat what. Do not grackles, being a bird have a right to my food? Can 10 Grackles be a problem and not 10 juncos? Why my attitudal difference? I might have to  do some soul searching? Am I bias? Am I a hidden bigot? Was I harmed in my childhood by watching the movie 'The Birds' and have this hidden and yet deeply profound psychological problem haunting me years later as an adult? 

I am not going to beat myself up over grackles....I am not going to admit I have a fault as a human and I will freely admit  my bias against grackles or crows, or blackbirds or starlings or jays or magpies etc... all birds which are considered by others as nuisance type birds as well. Some people put CD's on trees to chase them away, farms will use scarecrows....grapefields will use 'boomers' to scare them off etc. So really, I am not a lone ranger on my thinking here. 

I simply want my juncos to be happy. Is that asking a lot?  Oh...I don't want that Coopers Hawk around here either for it freaks out my juncos too.