Meanwhile Dapplegray had already started building another nest on the opposite side of the house. What was the seventh or eighth twig to Dapplegray was the last straw for the Hylands. They could visualize a whole series of inadequate nests and crippled babies left to starve. Morgan and Dapplegray were given one more chance to accept the nest from the pet shop. When they refused, Tom built a trap and baited it with Dapplegray’s favorite food, Spanish peanuts. Dapplegray made no fuss as the trap door closed behind her. Either she was so crazy about the peanuts she didn’t care what was happening, or else she was rather relieved to be getting out of a situation she couldn’t handle. Tom drove her down to the wharf and released her in the middle of one of the flocks of pigeons that hang out along the waterfront.
It was the Hylands’ hope that Morgan; deprived of his mate, would return to the innocence of his youth, the uncluttered days before Dapplegray. Morgan had other ideas. The day after Dapplegray’s enforced farewell, her successor was ensconced on Morgan’s perch and the whole sequence began again — the collection of sticks and twigs and the refusal of a substitute nest. After a long discussion it was decided that in fairness to all — the smaller birds which Morgan kept chasing away, the Hylands themselves and Morgan’s future progeny — Morgan should be taken to the Bird Refuge, another pigeon hangout.
The trap was set, Morgan entered without hesitation and the trip down to the Bird Refuge began. It was a sad occasion, with Mary moist-eyed in the front seat and Morgan moping in the back. At least the Hylands assumed he was moping. My own feeling is that he must have been quietly memorizing the landscape because when Mary and Tom arrived home, Morgan was already on his perch waiting for them.
“Who?” he asked when the car drove in. “Who? Who?”
“Who do you think,” Tom said crossly.
Morgan’s second trip, to Carpinteria twelve miles away, was more of a workout for him but still no real problem. It was becoming increasingly clear that more drastic distances would be necessary. The Hylands had, for a long time, been planning a visit to the Southern California Audubon Center at El Monte, about 110 miles south of their home. Morgan accompanied them, settling down to enjoy the trip as if he’d planned it himself.
The Hylands’ return without Morgan seemed final. Mary removed his food dish from the patio and Tom took down his perch and stored it in the garage. For a few days Morgan’s new mate hung around, but then she, too, departed and there was no reminder left of Morgan except a little pile of sticks on the ledge under the eaves.
It was the middle of May by this time, and with Morgan and his pals no longer hanging around, a number of the small migrant birds were coming in to eat and bathe. Some, like the black-headed grosbeaks, brought their fat, fuzzy balls of babies, while others, like the male hooded oriole, came alone to filch the honey water out of the hummingbird feeder. Though the Hylands bought a special oriole feeder for him and he learned to use it, he kept returning to the hummingbird feeder as if making sure their food was no sweeter than his.
This tendency of certain birds to drink or attempt to drink hummingbird mixture varies from neighborhood to neighborhood. Some people are forced to take down their hummingbird feeders because the house finches empty them as fast as they’re filled. Others claim that the house finches don’t go near their hummingbird feeders, and only on one occasion have I observed a house finch trying to drink from ours. In the summer the hooded and the Bullock’s orioles use it by perching on the spout, in the winter the Audubon warblers use it by hovering, not very successfully, hummingbird style. Sometimes I see an orange-crowned warbler take a sip, and very infrequently, a plain titmouse, this latter species being one of the few which don’t show a pronounced weakness for sweet things when they’re available.
On the first Saturday in June, the Hylands returned from a shopping trip downtown to be greeted by a familiar sound from the top of the chimney: “Who? Who?”
Mary quickly rolled up the car windows, but it was too late. Tom had already heard. “Good Lord,” he said, “it can’t be Morgan.”
But good Lord, it was. Nor had he come back alone. Somewhere in the course of his 110-mile, nineteen-day journey from El Monte he’d picked up a lady friend who was now sharing the chimney with him. She might have been one of the neighborhood belles like Dapplegray or she might have flown all the way from El Monte with him, led on by pigeon pleas and promises. In any case the twig gathering began again, again the nesting site was the tiny ledge under the eaves, and again the Hylands decided that Morgan must go and stay gone.
This time their preparations were more careful, based on greater awareness of Morgan’s capabilities. Through a friend they contacted a pigeon fancier in Bakersfield, some 150 miles inland. He agreed to take Morgan and his new mate, and keep them penned with his other pigeons for two or three months before releasing them. After this long a period he was sure that Morgan’s home ties with Santa Barbara would be cut and new ones formed with Bakersfield.
He was correct. Somewhere on the outskirts of Bakersfield right now one pig-headed pigeon is flying fancy free.
As this is being written it is March and many of our bandtails are getting ready to nest. Mates have been chosen and display is the order of the day. An important part of this display involves the male flying out from a eucalyptus branch, making a soft buzzing sound and wiggling his wings as he passes the female, a maneuver that should remind you, according to your age group, of human displays like the shimmy and the watusi. The male bandtail also uses inflation (to a lesser extent than the domestic pigeon) and a mating call that sounds like ca--hoo, the ca part being more like an inhalation of air than an intentional sound. Though it is not particularly loud it has a carrying quality, especially in a canyon area like ours. All day long the ca-hoos of the bandtails mingle with the incessant oo-hoo-hoos of the mourning doves. As the sun begins to set — sometimes even before — the great horned owls start in, hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo, and a little later the screech owls, with their tremulous hoohoohoohoohoohoohoohoo, until our canyon becomes a veritable hoos’ hoo in America.
6
Companion to Owls
Masculinity in our society is usually associated with larger size, greater strength, more aggressive instincts and a deeper voice. Conditioned to these notions, Ken and I made all the wrong assumptions the evening we saw our first horned owls.
It had been a hot day and we were watching the beginning of the California twilight. (If you don’t watch the beginning, you see very little of it — our twilights are brief, the least possible compromise between day and night.) I must have heard owls before, both here and in other parts of this country and Canada where we’ve lived, but those remembered sounds lacked reality, position in time and space, because I heard them before I was interested in birds and aware of what I was listening to. For the record, then, that warm clear evening in Santa Barbara was the occasion of my first owl.
Fortunately for me it was the great horned species, which makes a distinctly owl-like hoot, recognizable even to someone who has only read about it. Some of the other owls hoot infrequently, if at all, and make a variety of non-owlish noises: the saw-whetting sound that gives the little saw-whet owl his name, the sneeze of the barn owl, the sharp yipping of the desert elf owl, and the daytime stuttering of the burrowing owl which differs greatly from its own nighttime cooing. Tiny, the burrowing owl who’s been a pet at our local Museum of Natural History for several years, has a sound I’ve never heard this species make in the wild. When I stroke the side of his neck and ask him for a kiss, he nudges my hand gently with his beak, if he happens to be in an affectionate mood. If he’s not, he turns away with a peremptory “Zhut!” as Bronx a cheer as I’ve ever heard in California.