A Rana-Type Post


 


Rana often impresses me with lyrical descriptions of the fauna around her house. In that spirit (while hardly making a claim to lyricism), I found myself wondering what she would make of a little scene I witnessed this weekend at a local cafe where I was breakfasting with a friend.

My friend and I were sitting at the window. A couple had been sitting on the patio just on the other side of the window. When they left about half of their food behind, a little bird-war started. About a dozen sparrows and larger birds started scavenging, grabbing big gobbets of scrambled egg and other leftovers off of the plates. Suddenly, I noticed one sparrow was behaving oddly. He was a stout, fluff-feathered birdie, shaking his wings up and down. Not flapping, mind you - shaking. The wingtips stayed pointed towards the ground, and there was this tantrummy-looking fluttering thing going on. Then another sparrow landed near him, and his beak gaped open. I suddenly realized (suburban naturalist that I am not) that despite his solid build and full-grown sparrow size, he was a juvenile.

Juvie kept jiving his feathers and gaping his beak at anyone who passed by, occasionally getting a handout, until he got greedy and proved what I suspected: the lad was a bit of a poser and a whiner. He flew quite capably up to the mother lode on the table and started to fend for himself until a larger bird knocked him on his lazy bird tailfeathers for getting in big bird's way. He then returned to his gape-and-fluff ways. I could almost hear him cheep, "But I TRIED to get some for myself!!"

I then figured I was watching the bird equivalent of a 24-year-old living in mom's basement, playing video games all day, with the occasional feint at getting a job because DoomQuake 17 is coming out and nobody will give him the cash to buy it.
Posted: Wednesday - July 12, 2006 at 07:50 AM         | |

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