My History With Birds

As a child, I liked birds.  We had 2 cockatiels for a long time.  One even whistled when it heard the words "pretty boy".   


 I rescued a parakeet or two who had careened into windows and injured themselves while playing the roles of free-birds in Dad's fair displays.  They survived reasonably well as pets.  


My memories with birds turn dark with the doves.  My family kept a large cage of them on the porch outside the house.   To me, it seems we had them forever.  Really, I don't know how long they were there.   At some point, the doves started to mate too closely and quite a few deformed chicks hatched.  These chicks fell prey to the many cats we had and were caught right through the cage and dragged out.  Maybe my subsequent run-ins with birds are some sort of karma.


Around the age of 12, I spent all my birthday money ($100!) to buy a cage for a dying dove.  I kept it in my room, but it died very quickly.  I dragged the cage around throughout my teens and early twenties.  I really couldn't tell  you how many birdie souls were lost in it.

My troubles with wild birds started about 15 1/2 years ago.  I woke up one morning to find a juvenile heron perched on a curtain rod in Molly's bedroom.  I was alone and had no idea what to do about it.  After many fruitless phone calls, a neighbor finally threw a blanket over it and took it outside.  


Exactly one week later, I awoke to find a scrub jay in my house.


Around that time, I saw a turkey attack a man.  (He totally deserved it, don't tease a turkey.)  It jumped up on his chest and started beating it's wings in his face.


Several years later at the San Francisco Zoo, a low flying duck grazed my head as it flew away from a misbehaving child.


There was the time in Golden Gate Park when I screamed my head off at a flock of pigeons flying in my general direction.


A year or so later, I called the police on a mocking bird.  I thought it was a house alarm.  


A couple of months ago a large bird slammed into my windshield while I was driving.  It hit hard enough to make feathers stick. I think it was a hawk. 


About a month ago a Masked Lovebird flew around our backyard for a while.  It was in no way terrifying, but why us?


Saturday night, Wave found this thing perched on a chair in our back yard.  It really freaked me out at first.  My initial, totally irrational, thought was that it was a snake coiled up on the back of the chair.  


When my eyes adjusted to the dark, it became obvious it was some sort of bird.  But what kind of bird?  My mind when first to the more distasteful types of birds common to this area.  Juvenile Turkey Vulture?  Baby Turkey?  Could it belong to the neighbors?


I was terrified of what it might do if it were startled!  Wave didn't want to walk past it the second time.  We let him in through the front door


Actually, it did nothing.  It sat and sat and sat.  Then it tried to fly and couldn't.  We put the cat inside so they wouldn't hurt each other.  It managed to fly/climb onto the fence where it sat and sat and sat some more.  It was still there when I went to bed.


I looked at a million pictures on the internet trying to figure out what kind of bird it was.  I couldn't find a thing that looked like this.  Any ornithologists out there?


I am to the point now where I can be near birds without screaming hysterically.  I can appreciate birds from afar, but I keep a close eye on pigeons (not trustworthy!).  I'd even like to have chickens someday.


I wonder if this much unintentional bird interaction is normal, though?  Do you have crazy bird stories?