Some Birds Aren’t Nice

A couple of years ago, I heard the familiar cry of a Red-winged Blackbird and thought nothing of it as I continued to work in my garden. Then I felt something swoop by my ear and looked up to see the bird hovering by the tree across my yard. Its cries got louder and it flew by me, then headed up into the tree I was standing under. I was shocked. I had always seen signs warning people on trails and in parks about attacking birds and had once even witnessed a poor child running away from one at an arboretum, but it had never happened to me. Now here was this angry bird warning me off of its space. I looked at it with confusion and then headed into my backyard thinking that if my dogs were out, the bird would fly somewhere else. Then I found out that Red-winged Blackbirds are not afraid of dogs. “Well”, I thought, “This might become a problem”.

Days passed by and the attacks got worse. The bird would swoop down and scratch at the heads of anyone walking on the sidewalk. Then it would change course while we were in the backyard and hiss by our ears as it made its way from tree to tree. If I had the time, I would stand in the window at the front of my house and yell out warnings to people passing by. I found these big yellow balloons at the hardware store with giant red eyes that were supposed to deter them and put them outside with big sparkly pinwheels. Nothing worked. One morning I watched it attack a pregnant mother with a toddler in a stroller and I was exasperated.

I began to leave my house with a big umbrella that I spun around my head so that it couldn’t come too near me. Sometimes I also held a walking stick and would wave that around while twirling the umbrella at the same time. It was quite an effort but the bird still swooped down to protect its territory. I researched the time frame of when its young would leave the nests so that it would stop harassing everyone. But that time frame came and went. Two months passed, and the bird was angrier than ever.

Coming from an Eastern philosophy, I wondered if this was my karma. Or if this was an angry spirit that I had wronged. Could I make an offering to appease it? There was no good place to even place an offering that was not near the path of humans. This bird had laid claim to about six trees all around my house. No matter where we went outside, it was there. And it was furious with us.

My shoulders started to hunch every time I had to leave my house. My nervous system would overreact to every sound and movement. The weather was beautiful but I was miserable. This bird was, frankly, a jerk and was determined to ruin my spring and summer. But, we as humans, have also been jerks to these species. Encroaching on every single habitat for every other species in any way we can for greed, comfort, and convenience.

There was also an obvious connection between my fearful reaction and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds which had made me deathly afraid of crows for most of my childhood but now I realized they weren’t half as bad as Red-winged Blackbirds. This species was truly the muse for that story. I could not regulate my emotions here, and neither could the bird. We were not going to be friends and this bird was not going to get an honorable mention in my Forest Therapy walks like other birds such as Barn Owls and Robins.

What really irked me though, was that it drove home the point that we, as humans, aren’t the center of it all. This is not all for our convenience. Animals don’t just simply step aside so we can enjoy our outdoor spaces. Why wasn’t this bird accepting me as the ruler of this space? That I technically owned the land around my house? Why couldn’t it just let people walk peacefully on the sidewalk and enjoy their afternoons? Why did its behavior not revolve around me and what I wanted? Why did it not accept me as the supreme being in this time and space? Sigh. A mighty human brought down by a tiny bird.

While twirling my umbrella and waving my walking stick around one day, I wondered how many times I had been inconvenienced by other beings. Insects buzzing around my food during picnics, squirrels eating my garden vegetables, rabbits eating my ornamental plants, raccoons pooping on my patio, and who knows what else I had been angry at over the years. Then I wondered the impact I had on other species while in their space. Would they consider me nice? Had I “ruined” their experience of their time and space? I’m sure I have. I had to accept, as a human, we are not the sole purpose of this ecosystem. We are simply one part of a puzzle with thousands and thousands of pieces. If I was being put off by one species, there were (at least) hundreds of others put off by me.

Time did pass, and the angry bird moved on in life. I didn’t even realize when the day came that I no longer had to worry about it swooping down from the trees. I just went back to my usual activities outside. It became a distant memory until I heard a Red-winged Blackbird this morning and felt my shoulders tense. Who knows what personalities will sprout in the spring this year. If the ornery offspring of that bird happens to come back, we will just have to figure out how to make it through the nesting season. Co-existing in a space where none of us can claim anything but the time we spend in it.