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[ 5 minute read ]

Dinosaur on my window-sill

There was a bird in my bedroom yesterday. More often than I like, I hear birds fly into my window panes. They are always on the outside. I always think 'This never used to happen. Why are the birds of 'today' more stupid than the birds of 'yesterday'? ' This little bird in my bedroom was a Blue Tit. Of course, the sound of birds hitting my bedroom window brought me into the room. I ended up interacting with this one, at least a bit. 

I keep three tomato plants, that I over-wintered, on the window-sill of one of my bedroom windows and there between two of the pots was the Blue Tit. It was facing the outside but it turned its head sideways to watch me as I came near. All I was actually about to do was see why the birds from outside were hitting my window; nonetheless, I saw it. 

I don't keep the handle for that window ready screwed into it so I had to move away and then come back immediately with the handle. The bird was still there. It had made no effort to fly away from the window while I was temporarily absent. When I came back with the handle my pelvis was about 40cm from it and it had had enough and flew to the radiator on the opposite wall. It did not fly frantically around the room. It just watched me and waited for me to do something. 

Trying to open a window without screwing the handle to it is quite difficult, so I moved instead to the other matching window. The bird flew to a little ladder I have, which was leaning against the adjoining wall about six feet or 2 metres from me. Again, it watched and waited for me to do something. I think it had a good idea of what I was doing. I swung the window wide open and moved away. I pointed at the window and carried on speaking with a low murmur. It didn't fly through it until I had stopped moving backwards and was facing it and the open window. 

Of course, it was stunned by bumping into the window pane at least three times. Yet, it did not fly fruitlessly around the room AND it perched only a couple of metres away from me. Birds seem to learn not to fly into windows even if they are really clean. It must be the frame that warns them that there is an impenetrable shield thereabouts. This little Blue Tit, however, flew straight out the open window. It didn't make the same mistakes that wasps, bees and flies make when we open windows for them. I did not need to hustle it towards an open space or wait for it to accidentally find a breach in the impenetrable barrier of glass. I am certain it knew that I was opening a hole for it to fly through. I am sure it waited for me to do so. 

I am not a lover of birds; not one bit. I love the male Blackbirds' fluting evening songs. My neighbour, Sally, has a bird table and a bird-feeder in her garden, and perhaps birds have become familiar with her. You know; the presence of a human in the same area where there is a fast-food takeaway establishment for birds doesn't seem to be a perceived threat to them. But this is more. Do birds recognise kind people or people who are no threat? They see me from the bird-table tending my tomato plants. They see me pass by without staring at them with binocular predator-vision. They see I have binocular vision though.

The Blue Tit is added to my very short list of wild creatures that have interacted with me. There are the two very large ants that had each made a home in the bottom of two plant pots filled with soil and with a plant growing in each. When I pulled the pot from the soil to check the plant was not pot-bound (roots filling the pot) the ants moved their entire bodies to face me as I turned the soil and root-ball this way and that. There is the black spider that lived in my bathroom and scurried behind the sink every time I came close. It was the biting kind and eventually, after having been bitten by a spider before, I decided I didn't want this one on my towel. I had earlier been repeatedly stung by a wasp when I applied the wasp on my towel to my body. I sprayed the spider with fly-killer (Permethrin). I didn't notice until a few moments later that the spider had run out of its hole behind the sink, down the wall, across the floor, over my socked foot and somehow onto the outside of my trousers. I only discovered it when my hand brushed my thigh and I accidentally scooped it into my palm. The spider was either crazed by the Permethrin or begging for help, I don't know, but my immediate reaction was to throw it onto my living-room floor, because I thought it was planning a strategy to attack me when I sat down; like the other one that bit me in bed. This time though, the spider ran away from me, and I crushed it against the skirting board. I regret that so much because I can't help anthropomorphising it a bit. Once help was not forthcoming it had ran away to hide in despair.

I am convinced that creatures know us and what is going on with us. I had been accepting of the spider in the bathroom and even talked to it when it was not hiding. When it was hiding I spoke up close to it and it would have been able to detect the smell of my breath; and I spoke to the Blue Tit yesterday, hopefully soothingly in human terms. I feel that if we actually make vocal sounds towards creatures and animals we have an expectation of a connection on some level, yet I am puzzled as to know why I think that. But, am I? I have experience of wild creatures interacting with me. They can't be intelligent in the same way as humans, but perhaps their intelligence, not measurable by humans because we don't care to believe they have it, seems to allow a reluctant relationship with us.