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On any given late winter’s day, our backyard of one third acre of cleared land rimmed by forest provides a perfect stage for viewing many dramatic and ordinary interactions among our feathered neighbors.

During the early morning hours, the melodies of songbirds–chickadees, cardinals, wrens, and tufted titmice herald the morn, reminding us sleepyheads to greet the new day with good cheer.  They sing in unison from the crepe myrtles, from the wood line, from the blue spruce–even from the spreading yews where they often hide from the neighbors’ prowling felines.

By noon time, the morning birds seem to have surrendered to the sun’s warming rays for a well earned siesta.  In their place appear the stalwart robins roaming the yard, each a distinct pace away from his fellow robin in their constant quest for the most delicious worm.  By tea time, the only birds at the feeders are cooing doves, pecking at the seed hulls on the ground beneath the safflower seed feeder.  Not as quick as their fellow fowl, the doves are somewhat hampered in the face of danger by their not so quick reflexes and their chicken- like large feathery breasts.

This afternoon while sorting through the seed hulls for the choicest pieces, one of the doves failed to notice a threatening presence perched on a nearby pin oak limb–a young Cooper’s hawk hungry for a meal.  Suddenly, he descended like a meteor onto the back of the unwary dove who was mercifully stunned into submission.  The hawk then grabbed the dove by its talons and flew off into the woods, leaving behind its victim’s bewildered mate.

Instantaneously, a cacophony of angry squawks and caws reverberated throughout the backyard.  Our resident five hens–Annabel, Frances, Dorothy, Nan, and Jeannie-raised their horrified cluck-clucks  in protest, having observed this sneak attack from their safe haven of a caged coop less than twenty feet from the strike zone.  And, the resident fraternity of large black crows caw-cawed their outrage from tree to tree.

In mere seconds a gentle bird of peace was singled out, killed, and taken off to be eaten by a carnivorous member of its own species.  A few gray feathers strewn amid the seed hulls memorialize its existence.

And so, Nature plays her random hand in our back yard aviary….

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