Crazylegs

Spring Sprung

4am.
"I'm a pretty birdy! I'm a pretty birdy! I'm a pretty birdy! Yes I am!"
As misery likes company, Herself ensures that my half-awake state is nudged to fully woken by a deftly-placed elbow.
"Will?"
"What?"
"Do you hear that?"
"Yes."
"What is it?"
"It's a bird."
"But what type of a bird?"
"I dunno. Maybe the wren we saw the other evening. Go back to sleep."
We lie there, each aware that the other is awake. Some far off chirps and tweets are answered by a megaphone rendition of:
"I'm a pretty birdy! I'm a pretty birdy! I'm a pretty birdy! Yes I am!"
"Where is it, do you think?" Herself asks.
I mumble something negative from beneath the pillow trying to drift off again. Three-and-a-half hours before I have to get awake and more than a passing self-inflicted headache are not improving my humour.
"It sounds like it's in our gutter."
"Bugger the gutter..."
The alarm goes, in what seems like about five minutes time. Bleary eyed, I wash, shave, dress, open the curtains and see a thrush marching up and down our front lawn. It's pulling big wads of moss out and flying off to a tree in the field opposite.
"Ah crap."
The new resident has woken us up each morning for the past week. Herself thinks it's great.
"When do you think the dawn chorus starts?" she asks brightly as I'm staring into a bowl of cereal and thinking of blackbirds baked in pies.
"Dawn, maybe...?"
"Don't be like that..."
"I dunno. A couple of hours before the sun comes up, maybe. Why?"
"I'd love to hear it all.... Right from the start, I mean."
Oh brother.
Maybe I can find her a CD and some headphones.
Earplugs. That's what I need.
Zzzzzzzzz....!

Hard day at the office

There was a gentle, metalic clanking noise outside my office window the other day. It was the sort of noise one associates with pipes or beer kegs being rattled. A man's face rose slowly into view on the other side of the glass, a large piece of scaffolding in his hands. He was on top of a slightly wobbling tower of tubes and struts. He briefly looked up at the jungle ecosystem of my bosses' gutters then began to disassemble the platform he was standing on. In a quarter hour, he was back, this time suitably steadied and stabilised. His partner, below, passed up readymade pieces of the giant Mecanno kit, tied on various ropes and pulleys, crawled carefully up the outside and joined him at the top.

"They've finally come to clean the gutters," I said to the office at large. Some curious necks were craned towards the windows. In a few minutes large sods of peaty, weed-choked soil were pulled out and dropped into the courtyard below. The courtyard is surrounded on four sides by a three storey building. The scaffold was tugged and pushed along on large castors over the slabbed floor until the entire square had been properly cleaned. Then they took the whole apparatus down again and moved it bit by bit through the ground-floor corridors to the next courtyard on the other side of our communal office, the courtyard above which last year's seagull had been hatched.

This year's hatchling is almost fully grown though not as adventurous as the first one we saw. It sits dutifully on the ridge tile over a nook created by the louvre-windows waiting for its parents to return with lunch. I suppose not much happens in an average day sitting up on a roof. Nothing that includes visitors from below, anyway.

The man on the scaffold inched over to the gutter below the seagull's ledge. A long, white feathered neck rose up over the ridge tile above.

"Shree! Shree! Shree! Who the fuck are you?" it shrieked.

The man lowered himself a little to the platform and consulted with his partner on the ground. He rose up above the rim again, one eye on the bird which had both eyes on him.

"Shree! Shree! Shree! Get away from that, you bollix!"

A shadow passed over. There was a chorus of "Shree!" noises, as one of the parent birds landed beside the ledge nest.

The man gripped the head of a dandelion and pulled a sod of muck out of the gutter, dropping it into a bucket.

"Shree-Shree! Shree-Shree! Shree-Shree!" the two birds screamed at him. The chick nestled down a little behind the frame of the louvre window, perhaps to hide. The parent marched up and down the ridge tiles, neck thrust out aggressively. Everytime the man bent down to lower the bucket, the cries ceased. When his head was thrust back up into sight, threats and screams rained down on him from above.

At last the scaffold had trundled out of the danger zone and was being disassembled for another trip through the offices to the next courtyard. The birds gave one final triumphant "Shree-Shree-Shree!" then closed their eyes and rested in the afternoon sun.

Days of birds and heavy weather

These past few days. Firstly on the top deck of a bus sweltering along, looking at all and nothing. I noticed over the back gardens of houses off the Old Bawn Road a flock of starlings sweeping upwards. One would arc lower using the downward fall of its trajectory to gain speed then turning the angle of its wings slightly, pulling up, up into the sky, high, higher than I had ever seen them flying before. Something about their dancing skywards puzzled me. Then I realised they were hunting. Catching flying ants rising in the heat.

The birds' wings, stretched wide out to lift them on the hot air the princess ants and male, winged ants were soaring through in invisible clouds, would suddenly twist and fold in an anxious stall as the bird almost stopped to snap up another pair of mating insects.

Further down the road, great flocks of seabirds spiralled upwards over the parklands, following the swarms. White wings upraised they swooped gracefully and plucked at the air.

No-one among the footballers or walkers or commuters stuck in traffic noticed them.

This evening, walking down the long concrete foothpath towards home I noticed scurrying platoons of ant attendants rushing frantically about, encouraging latecoming princesses in lacy wings to take off onto the dull breeze in the torid heat and run the gauntlet in the sky.

Far off towards the mountains a column of hundreds of pairs of white feathered wings blazed in the sunlight, a beautiful ballet of death and of life. The children, bored with summer holidays, didn't look up, but went about the business of who was playing with whom and who's pick it was.

Nothing ever happens in Firhouse, no doubt they'll say.

Flying smoke alarm invasion

Herself thinks that putting on the feathers is just too much. I don't think so. Although the giant "worm" made from a discarded vacuum cleaner-hose and painted reddish might be taking things a little far.

But such is the level to which I have been reduced, wearing a dark-coloured boa and flapping about in snorkeling flippers in my back yard, competing in avian psychology with a savage blackbird which has been terrorising the neighbourhood for the past two weeks.

It started innocently enough with Herself and myself "Oooh"-ing and "Aaah"-ing at the lovely trills and warbles from last year's incumbent in the blackbird territory which appears to extend from the bottom of our road -- three or four back gardens in length -- to the top -- maybe another ten or twelve gardens' worth in the other direction. Last year's cock of the walk was a handsome chappy that battled it out in song with his near neighbours.

This year a new pretender has muscled in. And it isn't only other blackbirds which are considered enemies and intruders.

I thought the cats would naturally be a cause of the incessant "Shreep! Shreep! Shreep!" bird alarm calls, but then I realised the cats were inside the house and the only one around was me, minding my own business in a white, plastic garden chair in the rare patch of sunlight.

"Shreep! Shreep! Shreep! Shreep! Shreep!" the bugger says. And not only that: he flies up to the roof of the house in his Shreeping, then down to the wall, then onto the shed roof. On the shed, he ruffs up his tail feathers and makes a mock charge at me, holding his wings up suddenly to make a threatening flurry.

"That only works on other blackbirds, stupid," I said to him. But he kept right on Shreeping. It was getting on my nerves, setting my broken teeth on the last of their edges.

At one point, our tabby cat arrived outside to survey the scene. She watched him go from shed to house to wall to shed to house to wall again. The evil little puss waited until he had gone out of sight then nonchalantly placed herself in ambush on a piece of junk lying up against the wall.

"Swish!" went her claws as he landed briefly on the uppermost concrete block. He dodged easily. But no. He didn't fly away in fear, as might be expected of a reasonable blackbird. He took up position on top of the shed roof and added a "Chuck! Chuck!" to the "Shreep! Shreep! Shreep!" for a while.

The cats are bemused. His strategy is working, because they have generally made it known that they are less comfortable in the back garden during the day than before. Myself, I tend to stay indoors and close the double-glazed windows so I can't hear him. When he doesn't have me to bully, he Shreeps at wood pigeons and women hanging washing.

I have heard him from inside our kitchen and walked boldly outside clapping my hands loudly. This has some effect -- maybe because it has an auditory component that the little fecker understands -- because he ducks over the perimeter into another garden out of reach and "Shreeps!" at me from a safe distance. But it's only a temporary respite. I need to show him who the boss is.

So in the end I find myself in the black boa and the flippers, clutching a giant fake worm. If he wants to be top of the pecking order around here he's in for a disappointment. I can strut better than him, and catch bigger worms, and flap bigger wings. Just watch me, little birdy!

Herself has gone to watch the television news.

She says she's not answering the door to any more policemen.

At least I have my health

Following on from cheesy dreams and toothache, I found myself on Monday suffering with stomach ache. And when a stomach the size of mine aches, that's a BIG ache!

There's a gastro- bug going around at the moment and I seem to have got a version. It seemed in my case to only exhibit cramps rather than resolving into anything messier. All the same, I was in bed shivering like a jelly by 9.30 and though I went to work yesterday feeling only a little sore, I decided to take today off to chase off the very last of the bug.

Update on the seagulls: Three of us were looking out the window at the puzzling seagulls on Monday when a small brown blob of fluff on webbed feet scuttled across the roof tiles! The pair evidently have at least one chick, possibly two. Yesterday the parents spent quite a long time away but came back in the late afternoon. I suppose they were out shopping.

None can compare with the cliffs of.... Tallaght?

Tallaght Town Centre and two large gulls appear to have made a home recently on top of one of the pitched rooftops. I can see one of them from my office window, on the north face of the clock tower of County Hall, one sitting in the niche of a louvred ventilator. When its mate appears, the two greet each other with many "Shree! Shree! Shree!" calls that remind one of being at the seaside.

Someone speculates that perhaps the sitter is one of this year's young, still being fed by a dutiful parent.

I don't know enough about them to judge, but it looks to me like they're considering nesting on the rooftop. It is sheltered from the prevailing wind. It overlooks a courtyard that isn't accessible to the public. There are several fast-food restaurants in the area from which an enterprising gull might, conceivably, glean enough discarded food to raise a chick.

The nesting theory gained a little ground yesterday when the sitting gull maintained its position even during the worst of a number of thunderstorms that swept the area.

We are quite a way from the sea, though, and I wonder if nesting is a viable option. I shall bring my binoculars tomorrow. If nothing else, it should worry my colleagues in the opposite side of the building as I peer out the window and focus in one something unseen over their heads.

[Pic by User:Dschwen at Wikipedia Commons. Republished under terms of GNU Free Documentation Licence]

Birds

Closing the gate looking up. Or stepping outside onto the grass to the rear of the house with the sun already disappearing. In the last light of navigation the crows begin to come home in twos, then in scores, finally in one great flock like burned papers wheeling over.

They caw-caw at each other. Answering, another caw, further off, fainter, as more come into view. They poke at each other in flight, full of mischief.

"Look out! You're falling!"

"No I'm not! I can fly higher than you!"

The strong beat of black wings, the noise and cackles suddenly overhead now, black crosses flapping by. Some are glossy with this year's feathers. Many beaks are greyer, wiser. The urge to stare upwards vertically is sore in the back of the neck as they pass over.

On windier days the passage is quicker, but no less puncuated with enthusiasm. They streak by, arcing back to circuit over the houses as if the journey should only take so long and no longer, turning back on their flight paths in figures of eight.

Then, a mirror version of their first appearance, the throng thins as the majority seek roosts further down the road in the trees beside the convent and by the river. Some few pass by in sixes, fours, twos, until only one more comes lately by, calling for the others, wings beating purposefully homewards.

It happens every evening. I am glad.

He marks the fall of a sparrow

First published on the Dublin South-West Forum

So it was a glorious sunny end of a day re-decorating when the bird started singing inside the wall. Herself & I looked at each other. There were holes in the front of the house that used to hold anchor bolts for a long-removed television antenna. Every year something small nested in there. The bloody bird must have fallen down the cavity in the wall all the way from near the roof!

"We can't just leave it there to die!"

I was doubtful. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Apparently it was inside a cavity block behind a coat of plaster, behind wallpaper, behind a bookcase, sundry piles of books, a couple of half-empty plastic Coca-cola bottles, videotapes...

"I suppose I could cut one of the floorboards on the offchance it got into the floor space..."

The poor little birdy whistled sweetly from behind the wall, singing a joyful little tune despite the hopelessness surrounding it. There was nothing for it.

D**n it! I had just put away the toolbox. Herself started shifting books while I considered the best way to break into the floor without having to make too many repairs afterwards.

Then the bird started singing from the other side of the room...

"What the f....!"

I crawled through the miscellaneous tools, extension cords, books, videos to the place from which the "birdsong" was sweetly coming. I poked a plastic Coke bottle suspiciously. It squeaked and went on whistling.

The bottle had been heated in the "glorious sunshine" and as its lid was only partially on the escaping gas that bubbled out made a sweet, sweet song....

I started putting tools back in the box while She moved the books. That plastic bottle went in the bin. The hard way.