Rambling on about birdies and squirrels

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Disclaimer: These posts were mostly sort of cut and pasted from e-mails I had sent to someone who shall remain nameless but may have a pigeon named Mr. Squeaks. As such they were written in various tenses depending on the actual chronology of the events, and also on any possible whim I might have to use the past pluperfect imperative subjunctive conditional tense or something. So if there are occasional really bizarre passages, blame it on that.

Well, a summer has come and gone, and other than a couple of cameo visits, no sign of the pigeon family. On one visit I think I identified Dad and one of the newly adult squabs, so it’s good to know that at least one of the second generation made it through the winter. It was “Little Boy”, who was the less developed of the chicks, so I figure that “Fat Man” is also alive and well somewhere.

But, though lacking pigeons, I determined that there were a lot of other little and not so little birdies around. Sadly, I had no idea what the majority of them were (hey – I was pretty proud that I could identify pigeons), but I figured that I could rely on a pigeon forum contact to sort this out. So I fired off some fuzzy, grainy pictures to Shi (Mr. Squeaks), who forwarded them to her former son-in-law Paul, who instantly identified them as a Red Breasted Nuthatch and a Black Capped Chickadee.

I dashed to the web to find out about these little guys and was aghast to find that their conservation statuses were both “Least Concern”. This somehow implied that people should care more about Britney shaving her head and Paris doing time than whether these guys lived or died. Being contrarian by nature, I immediately set out to make sure these species survived and thrived, a process that involved several luxurious feeders, two that look suspiciously like leftover building materials, and one that looks a lot like a birdbath that the little pigs never used.

So my yard was soon buzzing, squeaking, chirping, and barking with a mass of animal life. Hey- now I know why these guys were “Least Concern!” Within days a vaguely spherical bird arrived that was quickly identified by the Shi-Paul connection as a Dark Eyed Junco. Then a gazillion of his close friends and relatives came by. But that comes later.

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In reading up on them, I learned that the chickadees’ chirping is a really rather advanced language. Those bursts of three "cheeps" can convey all kinds of stuff, from alarms to recognition of a passing flock. Supposedly the more “dee’s” at the end, the greater the danger in their alarm calls. I suspect that, since these guys don't migrate, the local Alaskan vocabulary is largely filled with variations of, "It's friggin’ cold!"

And, while the sexes look alike, so I'm not immediately passing judgment on the snackers' sexual orientation, I fear they may still be smitten by God for violating the "mixing of the seed" prohibition that banned interracial dating at Bob Jones University because, "They may interbreed with Carolina Chickadees or Mountain Chickadees where their ranges overlap." The black-capped chickadee may, that is... students at Bob Jones are not to take this out of context and start wooing the local bird population.

But it's not easy being a god-fearing chickadee: "The Black-capped and Carolina Chickadees are virtually impossible to tell apart visually, but they are readily distinguished by call." So if one of one species spots a hottie from the other, he/she can just play the strong, silent type and possibly get lucky. The article goes on to say that, "Their point of overlap is near New Brunswick, New Jersey," which is just another nail in that fine state's coffin. First the stench, then Newark, then Gov. McGreevey's gay extra-marital affair, and now we find that it's a hotbed of kinky chickadee sex.

Generally very polite little guys – not feeder hogs like some birds I might mention. In fact, that is one maddening trait: Never sitting still for more than about five seconds, they generally get their meals to go, darting off to a nearby tree to split open the seeds. It makes photography a real nightmare.

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People with a lot of time on their hands determined that the nuthatches have decoded the chickadees, so they get the same warnings. One bit in the article made me wonder about their (the birds’) actual intelligence, though. The tests were done by playing back chickadee calls through a speaker. The nuthatches became more alarmed at the greater warnings, eventually mobbing the speaker when the "Russian missiles are two minutes out" (or whatever) warning was played. Now, how bright would you think someone was who dashed to join someone who is screaming, "I'm standing in flaming gasoline under a collapsing bridge in the middle of a gang shootout while being eaten by flesh eating bacteria!"? Great linguists, just not Mensa candidates.

But these guys are not new to thinking outside the box. They walk face first down trees (notice the big hooky back claw) and line the openings of their nests with resin to protect from predators. Oh, sure… that’s a good idea! “Oh, great idea, Honey – now he’s stuck in the door!”

One site said that the resin explains why their facial hair(?) is generally sort of mussed-up. I figure it’s from falling face first off of trees.

The tiniest things there, they are the gutsiest. They'll drop right in on the middle of a junco feeding frenzy, fat boys be damned. A few times I saw a junco try charging one, but the little thing stood his ground and erupted with a loud burst of "cawing" (for lack of a better term), so the junco backed down. They also dart in and out when the squirrel is there. Much more on the squirrel later.

It took me a while, but I finally realized I may have been threatened by nuthatches. That should make the little guys proud... Their victim thinks he may have been threatened. A few times, as I approached the feeder to replenish it, a nuthatch would fly by me, maybe five feet or so away. I thought that was so trusting - the other species stay well clear. Then I noticed them doing the same thing when the squirrel is on the feeder, and came to the realization that they were not being friendly, but threatening me with mortal peril if I didn't leave their food supply alone ("You saw how much that squirrel ate - we'd better keep this huge thing in a bathrobe away, or it's all gone in a second!"). This may be the nuthatch equivalent of grackles’, etc., swooping attacks to protect their nests. Yeah, they're little tough guys, but they must know their limitations. Juncos? No problem - they'll go toe-to-toe with them. Squirrels and larger? They'll fly reasonably close and hope that the weird buzzing noise scares them away. Otherwise they'll sit in a tree and wait.

But they are certainly fascinating, maybe for all the wrong reasons. For one thing, I don’t think they are really looking where they’re going. One time one landed literally a foot away from me, looked up, “peeped” in apparent fright, and fled in a split second. That was topped when one actually landed on my head and fled similarly quickly. That one may have been on a chickadee dare. And they talk a lot, too. Maybe not as eloquently as the chickadee, but they have to be the loudest things per ounce on earth. They yell at threatening juncos. They just sit in trees and yell. The make “peeping” noises as they fly: “flutter flutter peep flutter flutter peep…” I think of them as tiny New Yorkers.

The flying “peeping” is funny. I figure it is either a warning sound, like a backup alarm, “Warning! Warning! Ridiculously absent minded nuthatch flying through!”, or after years of ending up in totally unexpected places, like my hair, they are just plain scared: “Oh no! Oh no!”

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The nuthatches being multilingual is a double edged sword. On the one hand, they can keep up to date on the local predator risk level, and know when the Guy in the Bathrobe puts out more seeds, but they also get to hear the chickadees' brutal mocking when they, say, try to swallow something as big as their heads. In his defense, this actually is a good move: Like the chickadees, these guys generally get their meals to go, darting off to a nearby tree to split open the seeds or, in this case, get the Heimlich Maneuver from a loved one. They rarely stay for more than five seconds or so, unlike the juncos, who seem to eat until they risk falling over and rolling off of the feeder into the bushes. Actually, the juncos spend a lot of time in the undergrowth, anyway, ground feeding. I’ll walk out to replenish the feeder, thinking all is quiet, and several juncos will flee from the underbrush.

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So I put out a nice variety of potential foodstuffs: Sunflower seeds, mixed bird seed, safflower seeds, muffins, bread, peanut chunks, and so forth. Soon there was a thriving population of the three bird types, becoming more thriving as what I thought was a fourth type showed up. It turned out that female juncos look radically different from the males. Yes, there was a lot of he’in and she’in going on out there.

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And the foodstuffs seemed to disappear alarmingly rapidly. One day I looked out and saw the culprit.

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Yes, the squirrel is a cute little guy, and he really doesn’t eat that much, and he seems to be basically friendless. He disappeared for a few days and I was sure he was going to spread the news of the magic seeds, but no one apparently believed him. And slowly I began to realize why. This guy is a loony psycho. Dubbed “Norman” (think “Bates Motel”) by Shi, he seems to be seriously hooked on toadstools. I’ve found big toadstools five feet up in trees, stashed for future abuse. These fungi may be worth sampling based on the results. One day when I drove in in my relatively soundproof old Eldorado I heard a heck of a ruckus up in the spruce tree (little birdie central). There was a chirping noise and a lot of squirrel "barking". I feared that the drug crazed thing was beating up a bird. No - the chirping was also the squirrel! He was frantically running around inside the tree yelling at the top of his lungs. This went on for the better part of half an hour! As I sat outside and took in the show, I noted that the feeder was business as usual: The birds could care less about the psycho squirrel, as long as he was not on the feeder. Well, almost: I spotted several chickadees perched on branches, apparently as fascinated as I was.

But sometimes lunacy pays off. I was upstairs one day thinking about being hard at work on my home when I heard him barking and chirping madly again. Well, my accusations of drug abuse may have been premature. I looked out to see him once again in the spruce, and, at the base of the tree, a cream colored dog. Norman was definitely giving it a piece of his mind. His screaming suddenly reached a crescendo that was apparently so impressive to a canine's ears that the dog actually fled down the driveway. Pretty heady stuff for a squirrel. On the other hand, this particular dog seems to be scared of his own shadow, but let's not spoil the Norman's moment.

His moment, though, didn't seem too be that great. Maybe what means, "Don't make me come down there and kick your mangy butt," in dog-speak, actually means, "Oh, God! Please don't let this monster climb up in this tree after me! Oh, my! I think I've soiled myself!" in squirrel jargon. Long after the dog had left the little guy was still screaming and struggling to get as high in a tree as possible, alternating between the spruce and the neighboring birch. Really bizarre.

My only gripe with Norman is that he hogs the feeder. Generally the birds won’t land on it when he is there, severely hallucinating or not. I’ve never seen him go after a little guy (“little” being important here… stay tuned!), but I think that the nervous twitching scares them off. The notable exceptions are the nuthatches, who dart in and out showing great bravery, or perhaps a terrible lack of awareness.

Yes, one big happy ecosystem. Occasionally a pair of juncos will go at it - flying straight up about six feet, facing each other just an inch or two apart, "peeping" (for lack of a better description of their call) away madly. It looks for all the world like one of those modern martial arts/whatever movies, e.g., The Matrix, where the fighters appear to defy gravity. Except that these guys aren't suspended from wires.

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And now comes trouble. A couple pairs of magpies have shown up. Not a real problem for the little guys – they just stay clear, probably worried they’ll get clobbered by those ridiculously long tails – but Norman has a REAL issue with them. He’ll chase these things – which dwarf him – all over the yard. They’ll flutter just out of reach, then, when he darts after one, it will flutter right over him back to where it started. This can keep up for minutes on end. I’m fairly convinced that, while the magpies certainly like “his” food, there is a great entertainment value here as well. Once I watched him chase a particularly troublesome bird for several minutes, eventually stopping, probably to catch his breath. The magpie then fluttered back closer to him, yelling taunts. Then the chase was back on.

The magpies are wonderfully human at times. One was perched on a board an inch off the ground when a little seed must have really caught his eye. He struggled for maybe thirty seconds trying to get the thing without actually hopping off the board, then finally gave up and jumped down to get it. You know how you realize that you could just expend a little energy and a problem would be solved, but you also just know that, with one more attempt at the lazy method, you'll get it?

Another time I watched one pick up a piece of bread. He sort of chewed it a bit, then grabbed another. And another. And another. Eventually he was holding five bread chunks and was ready to leave. Then he spotted a particularly tasty looking seed, so down went the bread. He gulped down the seed, then painstakingly reloaded his mouth with the bread and departed. It was like me in a grocery store: I rarely get a basket, because I'm only getting a couple of things. Right. Next thing I know I'm wandering around absolutely loaded with stuff, and one more thing catches my eye. But I have no free hands. So every thing has to be put down, the new item secured, then the loading begins anew.

I of course looked up magpies on the web and found some great trivia. Magpies, who always seem eager to find something to yell about, have a bizarre death ritual. According to Cornell, "Magpies flock around dead magpies (called "gatherings"). The magpie that finds the dead bird may begin calling excitedly. Other magpies are attracted and perch in trees or other nearby structures, calling loudly. Up to 40 birds might gather within minutes after a dead magpie is spotted. Some magpies fly down 1 or 2 at a time and walk around the body calling loudly, often pecking at the wings or tail."

Notice that in just a few lines there were three references to yelling birds. And it doesn't end there. There is the fighting thing: "After failure to establish dominance relationships with vocal and visual signals, individuals sometimes jump into air in attempt to kick each other. May lock feet; then the more dominant bird stands over the more submissive one, which lies on its back. Amid much excited calling, dominant bird repeatedly and violently jabs with its bill at chest of submissive bird. Commotion attracts any nearby magpies, which stand around calling loudly. Often a bystander pulls tail of dominant bird, which causes it to turn around, often freeing the downed bird before it is harmed."

More yelling references. These guys live to yell. I looked at the lower feeder camera (I have my own “Bird Feeder Channels” on TV) and there was a magpie furiously stuffing his beak, obviously trying to make the best of the time before Norman caught him. The problem was that, even with is mouth full, he would scream at the top of his lungs every few seconds. Not the stealthiest of the species. Still, he seemed to fill himself and left before anything bad (like a squirrel) happened. Maybe that screaming was, "You still got him? Hold his ass down! I just need a few more mouthfuls!"

They mate for life, but as in any marriage, there are apparently squabbles – see picture.

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Labor Day: Summer was over, and I was trapped in my building (I can’t really call it a house) by the Alaskan State Bird, the Willow Ptarmigan (“Grouse” to most non-U.S. folks – “Grouse” must be Metric). This was the second day in a row that this guy wandered up my driveway. No, I didn't really fear for my life, but I wanted to go to the store but didn't want to scare him off. There may be severe penalties for traumatizing the State Bird. So I decided to wait it out, and found that a ptarmigan moves just fast enough to avoid a glacier, probably a trait developed through natural selection after thousands of their ancestors were brutally run over during the last ice age. So I got a lot of pictures.

The ptarmigan hung around for a few days, possibly camping in a corner of my yard. The vast majority of the yard is thick with trees and underbrush where no human has tread since the last ptarmigan-glacier tragedy, so I really don't have a clue what might be in there. Maybe Jimmy Hoffa. But on both days he/she (the ptarmigan - I'm pretty sure Hoffa was a dude) disappeared into the same general area, so I figured there was some camping going on. Maybe there are dozens of them, and this one is the scout, checking for glaciers.

While I never actually heard that they were flightless, I vaguely assumed that they were. For one thing, in survival school we were taught to string fishing net (why, yes - we all carry fishing net wherever we go - there are fishing net check rooms at the opera and all fine restaurants) along the ground, maybe up to three feet high, and then herd ptarmigans into it. For another, let's face it: They look like rugby balls with big feet.

I'm glad I did not vocalize this non-aviating avian opinion. I ventured into the putative ptarmigan camping area one day after seeing a large brown bird fly into it, apparently landing up in a tree - I could vaguely narrow down the area based on my last sighting. I was a little worried that it was a raptor of some sort, perhaps a hawk, and this could bode ill for my little guys standing exposed on the feeder. Eventually I spotted a suspicious bump in a spruce tree. There, seriously stressing a small limb, was the ptarmigan.

The next day it landed in the Little Birdie Central Spruce Tree. Wow! What a racket! Chickadees were yelling about it for about ten minutes. I'm not sure what they were yelling about it - they were still in the tree, some very close to the ptarmigan, and continued fluttering down and back to get food, but they certainly were speaking their minds. I guess that's what you get for having a large vocabulary that includes terms such as "rugby ball", "stuck", and "tree".

Frankly, it's a little scary that something that large and humorously un-aerodynamic looking can fly. I, for one, would be leery of one passing over me, partially for fear that the laws of physics will suddenly be enforced, but largely because I'm now highly experienced in pigeon poop, and these things dwarf pigeons.

Read the Internet, get more scared: Maybe I should be scared of these things. One citation mentioned that, unlike other ptarmigan/grouse, "...the male Willow Grouse often takes responsibility of the young by staunchly defending his territory and his young. Males have even been documented to have attacked a Grizzly Bear and will attack humans who distract their young."

The good news is that there were no young obviously present, and the visitor was a female, but one must still be a bit apprehensive of a killer rugby ball. Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail showed that even rabbits can be very dangerous, and they can't fall on you from the sky like these things can. And I don't have a Holy Hand Grenade.

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With the change of seasons the juncos headed home – wherever that is – and everyone settled in for the dreaded winter: Desperately trying to grow more down (chickadees & nuthatches), madly stashing bread and nuts (Norman), and yelling a lot (magpies). I decided to move the lower feeder into the lee of the building (our winds are remarkably regular in direction) since we get 70 – 90 mile an hour winter winds, and I’ll be darned if I’m buying seeds that end up in someone else’s yard, especially someone who might live in British Columbia, or perhaps Peru.

I'd make a great marketer - always worried that my loyal customer base will defect. So I only moved it about fifteen feet at a time, trying to creep it slowly towards the building. I also screwed a couple little bowls (well, water jug bottoms) onto the plank to hold some seeds in an effort to thwart the wind. Finally, I put a sawhorse where the feeder had been with a few seeds on it for the really dumb birds. Frankly, I don't know why I worried so much: I'm sure a nuthatch would find the new location and announce it loudly to all that cared. "flutter flutter peep flutter flutter peep flutter THUD. PEEP! What the heck is this? It wasn't here yesterday!"

Unintentional humorous side-effect: Since the feeder was now out of my line of sight, as well as the wind, I set up another surveillance camera to monitor it. At one point as I watched, the camera started shaking like in an earthquake. Sort of odd, as thirty feet away I wasn't feeling anything. Then Norman ran into view from the bottom of the picture. "Hmm... What's this thing on a tripod? I bet there are seeds atop it somewhere!"

The cameras catch some strange sights. My upper one caught a floating magpie. The other photos looked absolutely normal, so it’s not some camera problem. I'm guessing that he was hopping from the feeder to the railing where the third magpie was sitting (you can just see his tail). Still, pretty weird. If I were jumping over a twenty foot drop, I'd at least have my wings partially deployed. But maybe that is "chicken".

The photos are rather fuzzy, but huge: This shot isn't cropped - that's the full picture. The camera is a mere foot or two from the feeder. Even nuthatches look huge on my TV set. I don't need no steenking windows!

The suet feeder at the top right is popular with everyone but the magpies, who doubtless have come to grief in the past trying to hang from those things. The weirdest are the nuthatches, who regularly eat head-down (remember - these guys walk face-first down tree trunks). It just seems like swallowing would be a real pain, especially semi-gooey suet. They seem to solve the problem by bending their necks backwards so their heads and throats are almost horizontal – staring at the camera.

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My bird interactions have been limited to being used as a landing pad and providing seeds, nuts, bread, suet, and anything else I think their little hearts want. They flee when I get within five feet of them. On the brighter side, they don’t actually beak me like the squabs did, so I figure in another few hundred years we’ll be best of friends.

Norman, on the other hand, is an ongoing friendship effort.

Phase one: He found a way to the upstairs feeder that involved entering through a small hole in the building, scampering thirty feet to the side wall, shimmying up sixteen feet of wall stud, and darting across a floor joist to the attic. Then he reversed the procedure. Two problems: First, shimmying down the wall stud seemed more dodgy than shimmying up it, and usually resulted in an inglorious thud as he plummeted the last five feet or so onto a desk there (yes, a humane person would have put a mattress down for him, but I sort of enjoyed the thud as much as he dreaded it). Second, there always seemed to be some jerk in a bathrobe waiting for him after he recovered from the skydive and scampered for the little hole. It was almost like the guy had a motion detector at the hole to let him know when he entered!

So I would stand there and wait. Norman, apparently fixated on that particular route - the severe blows to the head alighting on the desk probably didn't help - had no choice but to scamper past me, dodging little chunks of bread that seemed to fall from the sky, adding insult to injury. Once he actually picked one up, perhaps because he literally collided with it (good shot!).

My friendship entreaties largely fell on deaf (and perhaps severely bruised) ears, but I wasn't giving up. There was hope - he didn't actually run past me at full speed (perhaps because he had to slow down to avoid hitting that mysterious electronic thing by the hole), and even if it were a lost cause, I just knew this was driving his little mind nuts. "How the hell?..."

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Phase Two: Norman began spending more time upstairs on each visit, leaving his benefactor standing in a bathrobe in sub-freezing temperatures while he selected just the right nuts and seeds. So I began going upstairs to meet him there. I’d watch him shimmy up the stud, then dash out of the trailer (I live in a travel trailer in my unfinished shop/home) and up the stairs. Then came the slow creep down the attic, speaking soothingly to keep him at ease, not realizing that my soothing tones and little clicking noises probably translated into vile death threats in squirrel-speak. At first I could get within maybe ten feet before he panicked. So I’d stop eleven feet away and throw bread balls at him. He would grab one and scuttle away across the joist, down the wall, out the hole, etc. As soon as he was out of the attic (so I wouldn't panic him further) I’d dash to the railing, which is directly above his little hole. Then, as he scooted out, I’d bomb him with additional bread balls, each of which had to be at least briefly investigated before he dashed for home. He seemed to have a good memory, though - I could watch him on the security cameras as he came back to collect them.

Progress was definitely being made, though. After a while I found that I could just stand still or squat and, after he had eaten his fill of the nuts and seeds, he’d nervously creep my way, obviously expecting the bread ball dessert. He’d come within maybe three feet. The problem then was how to toss the bread without terrifying him with sudden movements. I worked on shooting them marble-style, but learned that I could never make a career in the pro-marble circuit.

One of the more bizarre moments was when he didn't go straight for the climbing wall after coming through the hole. I watched out the window and waited. And waited. Finally, I went out to look for him. Part of all this activity was to ensure that he engaged in safe practices, i.e., things that won't get him shot after I find my garbage strewn about. I looked around a bit, although admittedly there were hundreds of places for him to explore, and finally thought that he might have climbed the wall unnoticed. So I went upstairs. I slowly walked the length of the attic, but no Norman anywhere. Then I turned to see him dart up the stairs. "Hey! Wait for me! Where's my bread ball?"

He must have been downstairs checking out some little nook when he saw me go upstairs. He knows his meal ticket.

With our snow I managed to follow him home. As I suspected, he lives in the meth lab. What do you expect from a mushroom eating druggie? Yes, I have a meth lab. Well, at least a meth lab wannabe. Almost four years ago, soon after I bought the property, my neighbor and I went into the woods and built the most basic storage shed you can get: Four feet by eight feet by eight feet tall. Considering that OSB (budget plywood) comes in four by eight foot sheets, you can see where those dimensions came from. It is just a big box - no doors, no floor. About a week after this thing was built there was a bit on the news about drugs. Apparently one method of cooking meth is to build a box in the woods, say four by eight feet, set up the gear in it, fire it up, and leave until the process is done: Less exposure to possible raids, less chance of running about in flames when the process goes horribly wrong.

By the way, the police chief lived across the street from me.

I followed the Norman Trail (a one-Norman wide canyon in the snow) to the box. He crawls under a side to get in. As the box is showing its age (hey - this was interior OSB) I could peer through where one end is a little open and see that he has trashed a mattress that is in there (no big loss as it was already pretty bad - I just never throw stuff away), but I couldn't see what other horrors he has wrought. Probably not many, as the vast majority of the stuff I put in there was steel or hard plastic. But there was one interesting thing: There was some quiet chirping in there. Now, Norman makes a wonderful assortment of noises, all of which roughly translate to "Where's my bread ball?" or "You touch my bread ball and I'll kick your magpie butt across the yard", but these chirps sounded mighty small. Norman may be Norma, and there may be mini-Normans in there. I'd be a bit surprised, as it would seem odd for animals without central heating to procreate in the winter, but my interest is piqued. Sometime when Norman is waiting for me up in the attic I think I'll break into the meth lab to investigate. I don't want to do it while he is around, as I can see traumatizing him/her and getting stuck bottle feeding a litter of baby squirrels. I guess it's better than having to puke down their throats.

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He found another way upstairs - climbing the outside "water main" (a garden hose wrapped in foam insulation), so I only know he is there when I see him on the TV or, more often, hear the rather ungraceful "thump" he makes jumping off the railing onto the floor. In his defense, the floor is, at this point, just a single thickness of OSB, so I'm surprised I don't hear the sunflower seeds fall when the magpies get wild and crazy.

My wellness activity - dashing up two floors to deliver bread balls - is losing some of its effectiveness. One time I saw Norman scoot up the outside of the building, so I grabbed my bread and headed up the stairs. He met me halfway down the flight from the attic to the mezzanine after climbing two stories of garden hose and running the sixty feet of attic. Maybe I'll just take my time from now on and he'll eventually meet me at the trailer door.

I think he may be visually impaired. Our first real contact was interesting: The little jerk bit me! Twice! Well, not really bit, but nipped. Note to self: Quit rolling bread balls the size of your fingertips. The first time I managed to actually give him a bread ball in my hand, he aimed a little low and I felt his tiny lower teeth briefly grip the thumb below. Okay - that could have been just bad aim. But a couple times later I held the bread on my extended fingertips. He seemed particularly skittish, so I let it roll onto the floor. Norman apparently did not see this (from six inches away) and finally garnered the nerve to grab the "bread ball", which turned out to be the tip of my middle finger. Hey - it was in the shadows, it was round, it was bread ball-sized, and there had definitely been a bread ball there seconds before! Just a very light grip-and-pull, then I was saved when he spotted the real bread ball out of the corner of his eye. That would have been a wild ride down the garden hose.

But we are becoming good buddies, as long as I have bread, and as long as the feeder has no bread or peanuts. Otherwise it's a marketing battle: Me making exciting clicking noises and whimsical "Norman" calls, the feeder boasting that bread and peanuts there don't have to be wrenched out of someone's hand.

He's getting very comfortable with the hand thing, though, rarely even hesitating: He just darts up and grabs - usually the bread ball, but again one afternoon he tried to run off with my thumb. So far no skin breakage - it feels more like a snag than a bite - so I 'm not sweating the rabies thing, but it is in the back of my mind.

That day's other high drama was an errant bread toss. Norman only follows one route between the feeders and his meth lab, I suspect partially because some of it is "tunnels" - under some construction materials, a car, and a boat - which is probably an instinct to avoid hawks, eagles, or really big falling bread balls. The problem was that this route took him right alongside the building, at the far side of a maybe four foot wide strip of foot-deep snow from me (I was standing on a shoveled area). In my heart I knew that Norman could hop through there, but there was this constant drip of melting snow off the eaves, and who would want the little guy to get wet? So I lobbed a bread ball towards him. It fell well short as I hadn't wanted to make a violent move in the toss. Norman may or may not have realized what had happened: Remember - attention to detail and visual acuity are not his strong points. At any rate, he just stood there twitching. Being fresh out of bread balls, I decided to try to find it. This involved rummaging in the snow pretty much right where all the water was dripping, and perilously close to the increasingly excited and confused Norman. Just what the heck he thought was going on will remain forever unclear, no doubt especially to him, but he began frantically jumping around my hand, then jumping back as it emerged from the snow each time. I finally found the morsel and handed it to him. Wow! A bread-flavor snow cone! What a treat! Then, with his usual total lack of gratitude, he darted off to store it in his "Strange Spherical Objects the Big Thing Keeps Giving Me" cabinet.

We're a long way from holding and petting, but he doesn't seem to view me as a huge threat anymore, sometimes coming over when called. I now never go outside or upstairs without my little pill bottle with a couple bread balls in it.

[paws]

Okay, this seems to have gone on way too long. When did I find time to write all these messages? Oh, yeah – when I should have been working on my home, solving global warming, or chopping nuts for The Guys. I am now chopping peanuts for the masses. I can't find diced nuts locally, and I've found that they are the Universal Food. Everyone loves them. The magpies and Norman can handle the whole Spanish peanuts, but the little guys can't (despite nuthatches great efforts), so I have a five dollar nut chopper thing that I use nightly, and have worn out in two weeks. Oh! But to see the joy in their eyes! Sure... The magpies always look a bit surly and the chickadees and nuthatches always look frantic. Ah, but Norman is a happy, if a bit deranged, looking little guy. The best moment is when I go upstairs with his bread ball. He'll quickly finish snacking at the feeder (if he was there at all), hide all the seeds with a few expert swipes of his paws (ha!), and come scurrying my way. He looks genuinely excited to see me, sometimes running almost the length of the attic. The hard truth is that squirrels rarely walk anywhere - they scurry. It must be something about the way they are built. But he looks so happy!

An arty looking photo: A nuthatch darts for cover as a junco (top) flares for a landing.

[AZWhitefeather]

THANK YOU so much for 'finally' getting these stories posted.
I need to set aside some quality time to read each one but I did take a peek at all the pictures & they are wonderful.

Cindy