Bloody Birds

Tis the season for dead birds. Spring and summer finds our little bird friends getting jiggy with it. They’re coming into town, having sex parties everywhere, running into windows, and creating little ones that fly and fall out of their nests and we have to watch and pray for them.

I have had numerous run ins with our feathered neighbors since I’ve lived in this house (from which I’ll never be able to afford to move). Should I spare you the story of the baby chimney swifts that fell into my chimney and I had to drive up to Dover to deliver to a birdy rescue lady? Yes.

Yesterday, as I sat on my neighbors porch, I happened to look up just as a mourning dove had a “run in” with the front side of a truck going a good 35 – 40 mph. I hollered. It was less than ten feet from my face. And even though I closed my eyes, the image was there. Everyone else got to see the rest of the grisly scene. As in the bird being tossed to the other side of the road, feathers flying, and then the death throes. Later, as we left the porch, I saw a now dehydrated carcass of a robin laying near the lavender bush. Ugh.

This morning I heard another mourning dove cooing in the tree. I wanted to feel so sorry that it had lost it’s mate in that heinous accident I’d witnessed. And then I saw it fly over to the grassy area just beyond where the other had died. And then I saw another mourning dove fly down. And then, oh my, they appeared to be ”fighting”. There’s a new sheriff in town. Circle of Life.