[TN-Bird] Rabble-rousing bird behavior

From: Dthomp2669@xxxxxxx
To: tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 19:06:44 EDT
Good Afternoon,
 
When I got home after being away all morning, my feeders here in the  
Charlotte Park area of West Nashville in Davidson County were empty, and my  
birds 
were HUNGRY!  The bossiest mockingbird was waiting on the  streetside mailbox 
as 
I pulled into the drive.  It followed my car up the  drive, and was perched 
outside the French doors when I got inside and  upstairs!  Other mockingbirds 
were stationed all around the yard.  As  soon as I got peanut butter onto the 
grape vine perch, "Bossy" was ready to eat,  but so was somebody else!  I 
barely got inside the door, "Bossy" was at the  peanut butter, when out of the 
blue, a chickadee dive-bombed the mocker and flat  out pecked it on the 
buttocks!  
The fearless chickadee lit about a foot  from the mocker and tried to edge a 
little closer as the mockingbird ate its  fill while eyeing the little 
intruder glaringly thus forcing it to keep its  distance.  After the 
mockingbird 
finished, the chickadee hurriedly assumed  a position at the glob of peanut 
butter 
and began to gorge,  This is the  same little chickadee that appeared last 
year with a bloody head and beak  and with all the skin and feathers torn from 
the top of its head.  The  little fellow IS a survivor and a parent that has 
been feeding babies earlier  this spring.  The feathers around its bare skull 
bone have provided it with  sort of a comb-over to the point that it isn't 
readily noticeable now that it  has bare bone under there where the skin and 
feathers have not grown  back.  It is just that I know the little bird and 
recognize 
its slight  "deformity."  It was just up there dining again as I wrote the 
last couple  of sentences.
 
Just a little while ago, I put more food out as the deck floor was  empty.  A 
few grackles have arrived, and they are "going through the grain"  so to 
speak.  My bumper crop of mice also feed AND provide food for the  neighborhood 
cats who seem to prefer mice to birds.  Well, one grackle  decided she didn't 
care to share the "Smorgabird" with mice, so she attacked one  of them with a 
series of pecks that sent it scurrying into the grapevines that  cover the deck 
rails and floor beneath them.  I don't think she killed it,  but I do 
sometimes find a dead mouse on the deck with a "peck hole" somewhere  about the 
head 
or neck that I have been attributing to a young hawk or owl that  hit its mark 
with the beak, but missed getting it in the talons and left it  there.  Since 
I've usually found them in the early mornings, I had really  been thinking 
"owl."  I've had great horned and screech both on the deck  "mousing" some 
nights 
and very early mornings when I let my dogs out to  "potty."  Now, I guess I 
might have to include grackles among the  birds suspected of killing mice.  I 
saw a note once on another bird line  about grackles actually EATING mice.  
Possible?  May be!
 
Happy birding, everyone.
 
Dee Thompson
Nashville, TN

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[TN-Bird] Rabble-rousing bird behavior

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