Last Saturday I had a problem with this robin. This really annoying robin. Beginning at 5:30 a.m. and going until about 6:30 p.m., this robin did nothing but fly up to my bedroom window, flutter and bang his wings against it, fly off, and return to do the same thing three-four minutes later.
I am sure it had to do with the reflection on the window, but I still don’t get it. And he spent a lot of time looking in my window– whenever I approached it he flew away immediately and waited in a nearby tree. So part of me thinks he really wanted to get into the room.
Why, in 13 hours, he didn’t at any point seem to realize the futility of this, or just turn around and fly off into the landscape he saw reflected in the window, I do not understand. All the banging and flapping didn’t seem to hurt him or bother him at all.
It did bother me. I tried moving the screen door to the other side. He just shifted to the window without the screen. I tried opening and closing the curtains. I tried leaving the door open with the curtain blowing in it, and the screen on the other side. That actually worked! But it was too cold to leave it that way. I gave up and went to work downstairs.
Where there was this robin at the kitchen window… Why did no one ever make a ’70s horror film about robins besieging a home? It could have been called: Robins!
I heard that banging again this morning, but it has warmed up and maybe the robin no longer feels a need to insist on coming inside. In any event, it stopped pretty quickly. The robins have been joined by lots of songbirds migrating through the area. My friend said this is the week for migrations, and that we can expect orioles and goldfinches this week, too. I keep hoping some will nest in our prairie and stay.
The most dramatic bird I saw today was this, which the same friend informed me is a yellow-rumped warbler. Both the male and female (I think that’s a female at left) were out on the honey locust tree (which as you see is just thinking about budding!).
Out in the garden, these are anxious times. Everything happens at once, and I’m trying to figure out the transplanting, planting, amending schedule. I always feel overwhelmed this time of year, although I make my mantra a variation on Anne Lamott and take it “bed by bed.” The biggest thing, still, even with two new raised beds, is finding enough space for everything. I expanded my garlic planting, and then bought too many seed potatoes, and had too many leek seedlings, and… It is very hard to throw away seedlings, even though you always start too many and thin from there to have enough.
Today I also saw a few pea plants pushing their way through the soil. I planted them three weeks ago and figured they might have frozen or just died in the ground. Last week I got ahead of myself and put out three pea seedlings I started inside. They got a little battered by the wind and a little frostbitten on the bottom leaves, but they seem to be hanging in there. And now that these are coming up, I will move the last three seedlings out. How nice for them to wait in the ground until it was time and then let me know.
