It's Not All Instinct

I think anyone with a bird feeder and a moment or two to watch birds at the feeder, will conclude that life isn’t purely instinctual for our young fledglings.  It is that time of year, at least here in Texas where nesting starts pretty early, that the young are hatched, fledged, but not in their adult plumage yet so it makes them easy to spot.  They are also easy to spot for the tentative way some of them approach the accoutrements we have provided for them- feeders, birdbaths etc.

Yesterday I saw a young Carolina wren come to the tubular bird feeder.  Generally the wrens that live on the porch are content to scratch about in the potted plants looking for insects, or the gutters, or just come for water.  However this young wren had noticed the action was on the feeder and once it secured a spot, it just started tossing seed after seed out.  It seemed like it was looking for the insect that must be in there somewhere.  But it did eventually fly off with a seed, a peanut maybe.

Whatever it found, that was the first young wren I ever saw do that.  Surely the squirrels and ground feeders are hoping it will do it again!

I also been watching the young and gangly, Golden Fronted woodpeckers hang precariously from the hummingbird feeder.  Getting the right angle so that they can hang on, yet still get their long tongue into the sugar water only comes with practice.  Liking sweets might be instinctual but how to get at them is not!

In the night I am often awakened by a mockingbird practicing it’s mimicry.  It goes on and on till I want to argue, “Aren’t you mostly diurnal?” Mostly, being the salient point.  Last night however, what I heard was a much softer and short-lived song. At first I thought it was the trill of a tree frog, but them it switched to a short version of “tea kettle, tea kettle tee,” so NOT a toad.  Then it stopped.  The adult goes on forever, at least it seems that way when you are trying to sleep, but this one, a few little lines, a restart, and then silence.  An immature mockingbird then?  Perhaps.

Bathing with gusto seems to also take time to learn. Young birds sometimes seem to just stand there, cooling their heels as it were, whereas the “dip and shake” move comes as they get a little older.   

I won’t even mention how quickly squirrels learn by watching each other.  This year we hung our feeder on a monofilament line strung like a clothesline. We TRIED to position it just a bit too far from the tree and from the porch to keep them from leaping onto it. It worked for months until this latest crop of new and even more athletic squirrels took center stage.  Either training camp really paid off or this new generation is just more athletic but, either way, there isn’t an angle that they can’t conquer.

My husband, a military engineer officer, has been erecting obstacles to “impede enemy mobility”.  They look impressive but so far have been no match for the “wonder leapers” this recent crop seems to be. I have been tasked to find pointy rocks to set along the railings but I am convinced it will only give them added height.  There is point in which we have to admit that our much-hyped “brain above all brains” is still somehow no match for a hungry rodent. What IS left, is the ground littered with the hardware of our attempts at thwarting them.  Charming.

MY instinct tells me to give up!