Yesterday I was refilling the gas tank on the wood chipper and looked up to see an eastern phoebe (a flycatcher) had landed on a small limb about ten feet away. This was pretty unusual, I thought, especially considering all the racket I had made with the chipper just moments earlier. I watched the bird for a minute and before long it swooped toward me to catch a bug, then landed on the hopper of the wood chipper, just three feet away! I stood very still, not sure if the phoebe was somehow unaware of my presence, completely unwary of humans, or was rabid and about to peck my eyeballs out.
Moments later I found out. It WAS rabid. It flew right at my face and when I ducked my head back, it fluttered around for a moment in front of my face, but then settled back to its perch on the chipper.
So I decided it wasn’t rabid after all and was uninhibited. Seeing how tame it was I slowly stretched my hand toward it, got within six inches, and amazingly, it flew up and perched on my index finger!
About this time Audry came out to see why I was standing so still staring at the chipper and as she approached I turned toward her, my arm still outstretched, to present my new friend. Imagine her face to see me standing in the woods with a wild bird on my finger! I could have eaten this bird like Golum if I’d wanted to, he was so friendly.
He swooped to get another bug and landed on a limb, but not long after that, he flew up to Audry and landed right on her head! I guess that’s what he (or she) was trying to do when it flew toward my face earlier. So, it stood on Audry’s head for a minute (fortunately didn’t poop) swooped for a bug, then perched on my arm for a while before heading to a limb again.
A funny thing is that this phoebe would not leave us. For ten or fifteen minutes, until we finally went inside, he hadn’t flown more than a few feet away. He was swooping and diving in between us, always perching within just a few feet.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. At the apartment I had Carolina wrens eating lunch with me in the living room, anoles and skinks eating from my hand, and now an eastern phoebe finds me in the woods and wants to be pals.
Just call me Jeffrey Doolittle.
That’s Doctor Doolittle, please.
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4 comments:
don't forget the squirrels too....
Right! One year at our house in Hyde Park, I had about 15 squirrels coming to the deck to eat peanuts that I’d toss to them. Well, peanuts and sunflower seeds, the seeds meant mostly for the birds, but rodents are crazy about them too. I easily trained one or two of the squirrels to take a peanut from my hand, but soon I stopped feeding them altogether, in part because we were spending so much money on peanuts, and also because these critters would get disgruntled when the food ran out and become maliciously destructive. They’d chew on the plastic garbage pail lid, chomp on the shed door to gain access to the seeds, and they’d even scale the dining room screen to peer in at us as though saying, 'hello, out of peanuts here.'
So that was it. I cut them off. Cold turkey. Or in this case cold squirrel. But it was fun while it lasted and I recommend the amusement to anyone who has hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours a year to spend on the hobby. Very entertaining.
maybe the the bird was an escape-E from a house near you, witch would make it a tame bird. the previous owner of buddyboy found him a shed.
This was a phoebe, not the kind of bird you cage, and it was with a mate, so it was definitely wild. Since my post I found a couple of pictures online of the same bird perched on the hand of other people, so I have a feeling it's just naturally comfortable around humans.
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