Yay! The green parrots are back!
I was reading yesterday (Paul Krugman, Conscience of a Liberal, a little outdated (2005) but, for some reason, in our library's new book section) when I caught, out of the corner of my eye, a flash of bright green by the birdbath and my brother yelled "Guess who's back?" from the other room. A pair of green parrots, that's who. They perched on the edge of the birdbath and nuzzled each other, bobbing their heads, and taking sips of water. One or the other, sometimes both, would fly off for a bit and then return. They were perfectly willing to chase the crows away from the bath. Their calls were so loud we could hear them with the windows closed. Eventually, they flew off but their nest is somewhere nearby.
This morning, with no parrots around to interfere, a crow family came by to visit the birdbath. Mom and Dad and three juveniles. The adults were black, sleek and glossy with piercing yellow eyes. The kids, slightly smaller but all fully fledged, were a dark gray. The parents showed how to use the birdbath for both drinking and bathing. The kids caught on quickly and two of them went in at the same time, splashing each other (crows do love to splash) and mock fighting until I thought all the water would be gone. Meanwhile, the adults were off in the lawn finding munchable bugs which they brought back, showed the kids how to wash, and then fed to the youngsters.
Suddenly, one of them discovered the mockingbird's nest (which must have been abandoned because no mockingbird came out to defend it) and they all swarmed it, poking around, approaching it from different angles and actually sitting in it. It seemed to fascinate them.
A fun day out for the whole family.
(Bartleby lay watching the whole thing from four feet away until she got bored and turned to face the other way.)
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