Birds, they’re great aren’t they, I love birds, I could spend hours just watching them.
I am of course talking about the feathered kind, my house is surrounded by them, noisy blighters, but noisy in a good way.
But there are 3 which I am sort of fascinated by;
The Yellow Tit
Every year a nice pair of tits build a nest in the cavity wall at the back of the house, they come and go, and come and go, and come and go all day long fetching little worms for the young’uns. Non stop, on and on and on they go, except at night, I think they stop for a break at night, perhaps they don’t see well in the dark.
The Pheasant
The male of the species to be precise, struts around the fields and our garden like it owns the place, squarking its pathetic squark like a demented fog horn. Now the thing about the pheasant is thats it’s dumb, think dumb and dumber on extra strength dumb pills. We have four cats, all of whom at some point attempt to stalk the pheasant. The cats are somewhat confused by the size of the bird, its a bit bigger than their normal prey, so they seem reluctant to go for the charge and pounce method of attack, instead favouring a war of attrition, they’ll stare it to death, stalk abit, stare a bit. That seems to be the extent of their strategy so far.
The pheasant on the other hand, is oblivious to all this attention, its as though it can’t see that its being tag-stalked, teeth drooling, by four very unfriendly cats, 2 of which are real big buggers, it just carries on pecking and walking. So I enter the fray, stomp on the ground, wave my arms, make noises.
The response is somewhat dissapointing, it squalks abit, flaps a lot, moves a metre or 2 away and carries on. I’ve tried hefting rocks at it, I don’t want to hit it, I just want to get a response, nothing, it doesn’t event stop pecking. One time when I did manage to get a rock rolling underneath it, all it did was squalk alot, jump up in the air, like “what the fuck was that”, and carried on pecking.
The pheasant, surely the dumbest most pointless creature alive.
The Swallow
Lets be clear, the swallow is plain crazy, insane, mad as a mad thing on mad pills. Theres 2 maybe 3, they all look the same to me, camping out in our house for the summer. Now your swallow, and this is my own opinion, exists solely to have a bit of drunken fun with it’s mates, a lads summer out if you will. All they seem to do all day long is engage in hurrendously dangerous flying.
Flying very fast all around the garden, chasing each other, then stop for a breather on the telephone wires, then they start again the chasee becoming the chaser, darting and weaving, stop for another quick breather and then they’re off again. Thing is though, they fly eye wateringly close, and ball clenchingly fast to very big, hard stationery things that, if they hit, would result in swallow squishee. One flew in through the kitchen window the other day, luckily for it, the window was open. One almost feels sorry for other more ponderous air users like the pigeon, whom the swallows harrass. Avian air rage I guess.
They also seem to possess a slightly mean streak. Our cats like to sun themselves on the steps at the front door, the swallows have duly noted this and like to fly into the porch and perch on top of the light there chattering down at whatever cat was lounging there. This drives the cats totally berzerk, all they can see is 2 tasty looking birds which they would like to torture and possibly eat, but they have no way to get to them. Its somewhat amusing to watch a cat trying to scale a vertical wall. This distress only seems to make the swallows even more giddy than they already are.
The swallow then, so absolutely barking mad how come it isn’t extinct
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