Subject: A Bird at the Window
Date: Jan 13 22:37:16 1998
From: ravenn at premier1.net - ravenn at premier1.net


Tweeters,
Yesterday, while I was at work, I had a phone call from an elderly
woman who needed help identifying a bird that had appeared at her
window. The bird had been hanging around her house for a week. She felt
the bird was very tame, and sweet and must be someones escaped pet. She
described the bird as a very soft gray with a dainty bill and as it
followed her from window to window in her home, she could see that it
had some light on its wings and white around its eyes. It was smaller
than a robin but was surely larger than a sparrow. She said she put out
birdseed for it and she opened her windows and doors in hopes that it
would fly in so she could catch it and could then possibly find its
owner. She had called the animal shelter and a wild life care center
and they could not help her. I spoke with her for about 30 minutes in
the morning and then again in the afternoon for about 10 minutes and I
finally offered to stop by her home the next morning to see if I could
identify this bird for her.
This morning as I parked across the street from her home, I
immediately noticed a gray bird clinging to her window sill. Armed with
my binoculars I discovered that the bird there was a Townsend's
Solitaire. The woman came around the corner of her home dressed in her
robe and I spent the next 30 minutes in her company as she showed me her
yard and her home and took me into her livingroom to let me watch her
new found friend. She was sure the bird came to her window to see her.
I watched the bird as it hovered and gleened insects from an evergreen
bush on the otherside of her yard. Her yard is rich in a variety of
mature plants many of which had berries. The woman tapped on the window
and moved her curtain and the bird flew over and hovered near the window
a foot or so away from us. It then perched in a branch very near her
window.
In Kenn Kaufman's book, Lives of North American Birds, he describes
Towensend's Solitaires as usually seen alone. "Feeding mostly on
berries in winter each bird maintains its solitary status by defending a
winter territory, staking out a supply of berries in a juniper grove or
similar spot." Mrs. James believes this bird has befriended her and
comes to her window to say hello to her. No way am I going to be the
one to tell her that her bird sees itself in her window and is trying to
ward off the "offending" bird it sees. She is happy now to know that
this is not an escaped caged bird, but a wild bird which is adapted to
the weather and very capable of caring for itself outside. And I am
sure she will enjoy its company for as long as this one bird wishes to
call her yard its home.

Yvonne Bombardier
Everett, Wa
ravenn at premier1.net