It’s spring, and as the days lengthen and warm up, we listen for the return of the robins. Soon, we’ll open our windows and wake to their enthusiastic chirping, their songs promising us green leaves and long summer days.
While there is no better alarm clock than the trill and peep of returning songbirds, I will remind myself not to get used to their lilting chatter. Because as summer approaches, it’s entirely possible everything will change. It’s the time of year when the gates of hell will open and release their demon flock.
These evil birds will arrive one day at 5 a.m. with a NYAK NYAK NYAK NYAK NYAK NYAK, forcing away their warbling and chirping cousins in order to torment me for weeks on end.
THE FREAKIN’ MAGPIES.
Those of you that have experienced a magpie nest outside your bedroom window will know what I’m talking about. I’m embarrassed to say that there are mornings I’ve risen, a sub-human shell of my former self, limped over to the window, and let fly a verbal assault so searing, it threatens to melt the screen—sleep deprivation will do that to a person.
Not that the magpies care. In fact, I’ve noticed they’re happy to give me an earful when I come out to inspect their nest.
They do that—scold people. They are one of the few animals that recognize faces. So when your neighbourhood magpies are squawking at you, they really are squawking AT you. They will also yell at your pets, especially cats.
The summer ruckus starts when a magpie couple choses a tree to nest in. Forget winter alliances formed while roosting with their neighbours! If another magpie even thinks of coming close to that tree, they are going to hear about it, or worse, get a talon to the face.
Then, the young are born, and that’s when things crank up a few decibels. The young use noise as a survival strategy—they are loud by design. They yell at their parents to feed them. They yell at each other. They yell to scare off predators. They yell ALL THE TIME.
It’s OK, I tell myself as I lay there venting at 5:35 a.m. Maybe there’s a hungry owl nearby. Maybe one the chicks will fall out of the nest into a coyote’s mouth. At the very least, soon these little yappers will leave the nest, and my nightmare will be over. Won’t it?
Unfortunately not. Three to four weeks after hatching, the young will leave the nest, but they aren’t going far. They’re going to hook up with at least two other broods, sometimes eight others, to form a gang, and maraud around the neighbourhood. They will continue to yell at me with their now louder voices. They will taunt me with their beady black eyes.
I once passed a gang of teenaged magpies roaming around a yard in Banff. There were six of them strutting around like they were six-feet-tall instead of six inches. When they saw me staring at them from behind a hedge, they all spread open their wings and gave me the side eye, as if to say, “what are YOU looking at?”
Punks.
The only thing that prevents me from acting on my dark-seeded plans to silence them, besides the law, is the fact that they’re so smart. I’m sure they would retaliate.
We’re talking about a bird that some consider as smart as apes. They can mimic human speech and comfort one another. They tend to their sick, grieve for their dead, and hold funerals. They even use tools. Surely they could figure out how to loosen my bike tire, or cut the brake lines in my car. At the very least, they know how to scare the bejesus out of me with a good dive-bomb.
They’ve got me, those stinkin’ birds. I think I’ll play it safe, and just keep my window closed for July.
Niki Wilson
Special to the Fitzhugh
