Meet: Cowbirds

20 May 2013

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Really, we should have known this wouldn’t be easy. As I wrote last week, a sparrow has made a nest and laid her eggs in our hanging planter. I’m rooting for these eggs to survive, as we’ve (the eggs, that is) had a three-year bad luck spell.

Luckily, I thoroughly enjoy learning about the animal kingdom because I now know more about cowbirds than any of you. That will soon change. (Bear with me — there’s a question I’d like to pose to you at the end. It’s an interesting one, I think.)

Speckled cowbird egg among the sparrow eggs

Speckled cowbird egg among the sparrow eggs

It seems a cowbird has laid an egg in the sparrow nest. This is bad because cowbirds hatch sooner and they are bigger. The bigger hatchling will most likely gobble up any food the sparrow brings back for her own brood, thus causing most or all of the other hatchlings to starve. And sometimes cowbird hatchlings push the others out of the nest. The prevalence of cowbirds has probably contributed to the decline of some songbirds (among many other factors, like our own prevalence).

Cowbirds are called brood parasitic because the mama bird will do this–lay her egg(s) in another’s nest and then that foster parent has to do all the hard work. In the past, this cowbird behavior has been attributed to everything from laziness to genius. I read several opinions that I should snatch the egg, shake it, and be done with it; I was even given this opinion by a wildlife biologist.

Not so fast. It used to be thought that the mama cowbird lays her egg and moves on. But a groundbreaking study found that some mama cowbirds watch the nest to make sure the foster parent is doing a good job. If her egg is removed, the mama cowbird will return and destroy the rest of the eggs. She will retaliate. These cowbirds mean business.

Add to your newfound knowledge the fact that cowbirds are a native species and are thereby protected by law. I’d technically be breaking the law if I shook that egg–though, from my brief research, it seems everyone does it.

I’ve always said I could never be a National Geographic photographer because I couldn’t just stand by and watch a lion stalk a baby elephant. I would have to save the elephant. But the lion cubs need to eat, too, and I agree with the principle that when possible, we should not mess with nature.

So–nature or nurture? I’ve pretty much made up my mind. What would you do?

P.S. I didn’t even tell you half of what I now know about cowbirds.

Cross Your Fingers

16 May 2013

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Three years ago, a pair of mourning doves nested in the hanging plant on our front porch. The doves—the parents alternated sitting on the nest and finding food—were rather large. Plus, being inexperienced with nests, I didn’t water the plant lest I disturb this miracle of nature. Needless to say, the plant died, stalks drooping downward, exposing the nest for blue jays or crows to come and steal the eggs. One of the doves sat on our porch railing for a full day, waiting, while my stomach ached.

Two years ago, a robin nested (stupidly, I might say) in our decorative, covered bird feeder right next to our fence, the fence being a favorite highway of squirrels and chipmunks. Knowing this, I was resolute in defending the nest. Upon finding it, I strapped the kids in the car and drove to the local hardware store to buy whatever it was they would say I needed. Armed with various nettings and wires, I trekked back to our home, parked the car in the garage, checked on the eggs, plopped the kids in front of the television, and headed back outside to begin the project as there was no time to waste. But in the thirty seconds I’d been inside, a chipmunk had stolen the eggs, one of which was splattered across our driveway.

Last year, a sparrow nested in the same hanging planter that once sheltered the mourning dove. There were three eggs and we waited and watched with butterflies day after day until one morning we found a baby bird fallen on our driveway just under the planter and no eggs or other baby birds to be found.

This year, another sparrow has come and nested in the planter closest to our front door. At first, Mama Bird was rather protective and each time we exited or entered or, God forbid, stood on our porch, she’d come swooshing through to get us to leave. But now it seems she’s become used to us and merely flies away to perch in the tree if we get too close. I have been watering that plant religiously and now there are six little eggs waiting to hatch. (Actually, one is quite large compared to the others, and also speckled; I’ve since learned this might be a cowbird egg and not good for the nest? If you know, please share.)

I feel that, in a sense, we are working together, Mama Bird and I. Each time I come out with the watering can, she leaves and watches while I take down the planter and her eggs, and water the soil around the nest. I rehang the planter and walk back inside, watching through a window as she returns to sit on her eggs.

This is our fourth straight year with a nest. Life has to win sometime, right?

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Meet: Our Collective Response

13 May 2013

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I’ve been writing every other Saturday for PDXX Collective, a group of women writers around the country, but mostly based in Portland, OR. Today, we offer a collective response to sexual assault in the military. Mine is below:

26,000. The number is just stunning. That’s 71 sexual assaults each day of 2012. In the U.S. military alone. If there was ever a time to use WTF, it’s after reading that.

It’s hard not to be angry that the man in charge of stopping sexual assault in the Air Force was arrested for sexual assault. Angry at the arrogance these people have shown—from the assaulters and rapists themselves to the brass who decided to either look the other way, overturn a ruling, or create and contribute to a culture in which those below them in rank thought that raping was OK. Lots of WTFs.

But all of that anger itself, even mine, makes me angry.

CLICK HERE TO FINISH READING MY RESPONSE, AS WELL AS THOSE OF MY FELLOW WRITERS.

Meet: My Mom

10 May 2013

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For Mother’s Day, an early Monday Morning Meeting:

My mom…

  • Was born and raised on the northwest side of Chicago and attended Catholic school there. (She will forever say the word “nun” with some disdain.)
  • Lost her mother to pancreatic cancer when she was a freshman in college; afterward, she dropped out to help at home with her younger siblings.
  • Became the first flight attendant instructor without a college degree at United Airlines by walking into her boss’s office and insisting she could do it, back when female employees were weighed and had to be single.
  • Earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s in Psychology while raising three children. She now works with mentally disabled adults and runs her own consulting business.
  • Forced us to sit and wait on the stairs Christmas morning until she’d made her first cup of coffee.
  • Loves ham. And also Red Hots.
  • Let us take one “mental health day” off school per semester, even as young children, way before anyone knew what the hell that was.
  • Used to pull pantyhose down over her head and chase us like a zombie, groaning, “I’m not your mother…”
  • Left surprise presents on our beds.
  • Attended all my softball games.
  • When I was 10, told me I could pick the new paint color for my bedroom, then tried to convince me that purple wasn’t a good color because it “makes people drowsy”; she painted the walls mint green. (Sorry, Mom, had to include that one.)
  • Cannot tell a story. Cannot. Tell. A. Story. (Neither can I, which is why I write.)
  • Once cried while we decorated the Christmas tree because “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” came on and it was her mother’s favorite song.
  • Once cried many times. (She’s a crier, though she cries with a look of apology—“Ohhhh, here I go again!”)
  • Ran, arms flailing, into the middle of a fight in which a boy was getting beaten up, then followed the boy home to make sure his mother knew he was having a hard time and needed support.
  • Leaves a comment on almost every one of my blog posts, purposely in a manner that it’s unclear she’s my mother.
  • Hosts our family for dinner many Sundays, and buys me free-range, organic meat (and makes sure I know it).
  • Pretends that offering my children three desserts (not a choice of three—three) is normal.
  • Simply cannot, for all her intelligence, pronounce “Netflix”; to her it will always be “Netflex.”
  • Taught me to laugh at myself (one of my favorite qualities in anyone).
  • Taught me to take myself seriously (one of my favorite qualities in myself).
  • Passed on to me her love of music, history, nature walks, back tickles, laughing, and tradition. Also her short legs and square feet. But I still love her.

Happy Mother’s Day.

She also dislikes having her photo taken, so here she is in 1948--68ish with Santa.

She also dislikes having her photo taken, so here she is in 1948/68ish with Santa.

Meet: Grandma’s House

6 May 2013

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The cherried curtains tickled her back, blown in by the breeze through the open kitchen window. She sat at the Formica table, her thighs stuck to the vinyl chair cushion, eating bologna, which she didn’t like, on bread covered with Miracle Whip, a tang that bit her tongue. The kitchen smelled like gas because of the range, unlike the electric range at her own house. (She will forever associate the smell of stove gas with Miracle Whip.) She picked off the bologna, deciding it was better alone than paired with something else she disliked. Made do.

Out the window, Grandpa sat in a metal folding chair, smoking under the cranberry tree. He ashed into an old soup can fixed to a rod, which was stuck into the ground. Grandma hung laundry on the umbrella clothesline. Upstairs, her brother read a hardcover found on a dusty shelf under the eave. When he could hold it no longer, he closed the book and slid off the bed, ran down the hallway past the dark empty room, plumbed for a toilet but housing none, and down the stairs to the bathroom. Made do.

The two skipped across the backyard in bare feet, careful to avoid the cranberries on the ground, to the corner where an old fence met a bramble of buckthorn. They stood on the fence and watched the railroad tracks, waiting, looking east toward the freight yards. Her brother hopped over and placed a nickel on the rail. Still nothing. When they tired of waiting, they jumped off the fence and ran around the house, past towering lilac bushes, to sit on the cement front steps and see what they could see.

They saw a garter snake slither between a crack in the steps. Saw a boy they didn’t know ride by on his bicycle, and didn’t wave. They saw a teenager’s legs sticking out from under his Datsun in the driveway across the street. Grandma called so they leaped up and ran through the front door. She twirled the mermaid ashtray on the glass living room table as she went by, he punched the number 7 on the rotary phone in the hall. In the TV room, they sprawled on the itchy carpet and colored in the books Grandma laid out. She colored her tree purple because there was no green. Made do.

Picnic in Grandma's backyard, 1981

Picnic in Grandma’s backyard, 1981. Ice cream and chocolate cake. Made do.