Demented Bird Attack!

We don't have any forsythia here but I have always loved seeing its burst of yellow flowers in spring. The other day driving home we came around the corner and there in a wonderful blaze of color was this huge mound of golden flowers. I drive this way often and seeing that forsythia in bloom was breathtaking!

You can just see the roof of the house behind. I was standing beside the mound and it was half again as tall as I was! It was so neat being surrounded by all that color!

In the same planting were several rhododendrons. I think they are the purple ones but will have to go back for more pictures when they flower. The buds were thick and full, ready to go as soon as they get a little bigger.

It was late afternoon and the sun was low over the mountain. Everything had that lazy day, dusty look. The temperature had gotten up to around 80 for the first time and everything seemed ready for the cooler temperature of evening. We had snow only a week before and some of it was still left here and there in the shadier spots. It takes us a while to adjust. Kind of hard going from winter to summer with just a day or two of spring.

On my walk earlier in the afternoon I saw other signs of spring - Pussywillows fuzzed out next to a neighbor's driveway and little green leaves at the side of another's garage.

What more could you ask for taking a springtime walk up the road? Well, there is one more thing I will share with you today - Tuesday evening we heard "peepers" for the first time!

Oh, yes - I almost forgot - the demented bird attack! There has been a robin pecking at the attic window. He would peck and then jump back into the spruce tree, then he'd repeat his performance. There used to be a nest up in that window so at first we thought he might be working to repair that nest of build a new one. That was the first day. For a week we would be wakened in the early hours to his banging away repeatedly on this window. It was surprising how loud it was.

A few days ago he began his interrupted flight cycle on the top of the bedroom window. He has done this every morning. No nest building at all. He is just flying at the glass and beating his wings against it. Then he sits on a pine bough doing his heavy breathing before attacking the window again, and again, and again. I wanted to catch him with the camera but when I got up to get it in the next room he hid. Last night I set the camera on the night table. This morning I jumped out of bed, hit the ready button and stood waiting for the next attack. It never came.

When I went in after breakfast to make the bed he was doing his act again. The camera was still there. I hid behind the lamp camera on and focused on the window glass where he usually hit and flapped. That crazy bird flew to the back window, flapped at it once and then disappeared into the pine tree once more. Bad enough he is waking us up every morning (before the sheep) but worse that he is adding insult to injury.

There were numerous accounts of birds, namely robins, doing this and being caught on film by others who had posted online. Is this a mating ritual? Where are the females that he is trying to impress? Our neighbor across the road said he has a robin waking him up in the morning doing the same routine. He said he thinks it is an old girlfriend coming back to give him grief. So what excuse does our bird have?

This morning I put some mail in the box and heard a racket in the trees across the road. Two male robins were having one heck of an argument and getting into quite a flap flying from tree to tree and pecking at each other. Didn't look like either one was winning. Where are the females to whip them into shape and keep them busy when you need a little sleep?