Thursday, April 28, 2011

She's Her Own Worst Enemy

I was sitting in the living room yesterday and kept hearing what I thought was a dripping tap upstairs. Checked the bathroom and all seemed fine, and then I realized it was coming from the office.

This is what I saw...


...a female cardinal batting her wings against the window.

We've had this stained glass picture hanging in the window for years, and although we have always had cardinals sitting in the tree peering in through the window, they have never done this before:



And she kept doing it, over and over again...





What magnificent wings and tail she has!

We assumed she was trying to attract the cardinals hanging in the window, so we took down the picture, and DOTH put up a plain sheet of paper. But still she kept flying into the window:



So we googled "cardinal flying repeatedly into window" and learned that the female cardinal is a fierce defender of her territory, especially if it is mating season and she is nesting nearby. So she was probably attracted both by the picture and the reflection of her own self -- and became her own worst enemy!

We also learned that while she is defending her territory (which went on all day yesterday and throughout today...and even as I type this), the male will come, from time to time, and feed her -- which is exactly what he did!



(we thought they were kissing at first!)

I don't want to tell you how long I stayed nearby, taking photos -- but I got a LOT of shots!







Still struggling with this new camera, though. I am sure my shots could have been much better.

2 comments:

  1. Those are amazing pictures. Poor thing fancy fighting yourself for hours, it is like something out of a Norse myth. You may have a 'sport' setting on your camera that freezes the action but you need good light for those settings, but the pictures look OK to me.

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  2. And she continues to this day, snafu. However, as a postscript to previous posts - I have made friends with my neighbours. They are out there today with a machine that crumbles trees and branches to mush, so I asked them a favour -- could they crush the part of the lilac tree that fell down on our side? They were very accommodating and we had a nice chat. It seems they felt the lilac tree was dying and that the best thing to do is to cut it back completely and see if it revives. Not sure it was dead, since it has bloomed beautifully in the last couple of years, but time will tell. If it doesn't, they plan on doing something so that we all have privacy. Hopefully all is well that ends well.

    I also spoke to the back neighbour, as she was out there continuing with the green strips. I didn't mention her cutting back our trees, but hopefully we will have peace all around, now.

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