Bird
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Cadwell NOT Caldwell
Bird
[3 minute read ]
Bird
I think I have worked it out. Animals really do work around us humans. We might find YouTube videos that have titles such as 'When Animals asked for Help' and think 'Yeah Right' with a great deal of skepticism, yet, I keep coming across instances when animals seem to exhibit an intelligence that I just would not expect from creatures, that, let me be honest, are just animals with low Binet-Stanford testing IQs
Let me be clear. I could not thrive in the same circumstances as most animals. Certainly, I cannot see insects that are good food-stuff for me if I was a bird or bat, or even as a human. I think, from my quite limited scope of how people actually live and survive that there are a lot of people who know which insects to eat and which ones to leave well alone. I am thinking of African and Asian cultures. Wow! Good for them! I know I live in a temperate zone in which the greatest empires have hatched and I am supported in my thinking by many ideas that it is the same environment that allows a continuance of purpose to exist due to the good child survival rate in my temperate zone. But that is history; easily said. It is also sociology and politics. Those two I am not 'au fait' with in sufficient depth to invite.
I hope that the coal-tit that found itself in my bedroom some weeks ago is the very same one that is feeding its young not four feet from my living room window. I don't know that, of course, because it has not announced itself such as it might in an old Disney animated film. However, I can't help but think when a coal-tit didn't panic while I moved around my bedroom to find good solutions for its exit when it was the wrong side of a window that it is the same one; stand here and here and then go to the window and then stand here and so on, and when to make a vocal sound. It, I deeply felt, knew I meant it no harm. I was for a few seconds in a position to catch it in my left hand; I didn't. It knew I wouldn't.
What purpose could humans have for a small bird? And why would it nest so close to my window in the ivy that clings to my wall? There are jackdaws living in the area and like, I suppose, most corvids they are both clever and mean. I am not sure that I want to glue those two traits together such as clever and alive equals mean, but there are a lot of pigeons flying into windows in my neighbourhood and we know they're not mean. Just saying. If a Disney cartoon coal-tit was looking for a good place to nest in my bedroom and decided that maybe the windows might be shut sometimes (which was evident because I had to open a second one to let it out) then it might decide to nest close to humans because jackdaws being geniuses in the local bird environment recognise that humans have superior intelligence (not that I am sure that is so. I think it is intelligence adapted to an environment we have created). The jackdaws, let's be honest, are the nightmare neighbours, but even they know when they are targeted; just not yet. They stay safely at a good distance from possible attack.
I don't hear the coal-tit chicks anymore. I am certain they could not have flown the nest, so they have either been eaten or the parents have persuaded them to be quiet when food arrives. I wonder how that conversation went. Do chicks naturally decide to hide? Chicken and duck chicks are really quite evident but they do have a lot of siblings that could be else plucked from the ground.
I should like to think that I have a good working relationship with animals and tiny creatures and they have an intelligence that allows them to adapt to human activity in ways that I admire and aspire to. I can't really convince myself that they go home to their families and complain about the humans and what they have done. They, I am certain, just get on with living; living in a harsh environment. But like Snow White in the 1937 Disney animated film 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves' (which is apparently based on an 1812 fairy-tale) I fantastically place myself as being a part of the coal-tit's life.
'Should I talk with the window open?'
'Why wouldn't you?'
'The chicks might get used to human voices and think they are safe when they hear them.'
'Is that a bad thing? We don't eat larks tongue soup anymore.'
'I know. And I recognise that Sally, next door, provides food and water for the local birds and they might trust humans to provide a food-source.'
'Pigeons think that Sally provides waste and an opportunity for a free meal. Small birds think Sally provides a constant source of food that can sustain them while they collect softer food in the wild. I might add that the Jackdaws are predatory free-loaders.'