Day 288: October 14th – Grackles and a Hermit thrush

Sunny, high of 70, a light breeze

       I began the day checking out my two mixed seed feeders which I filled only the day before yesterday.  They were now both completely empty and my first thoughts turned to those pesky squirrels.  Both of these feeders are among the more “squirrel proof” that I have, however, and I was at a loss to explain the depletion of the feeders by culprits other than the rodents.

       All of a sudden, in flew a flock of grackles…..a few pilfering what little remained on the trays of the void feeding stations and the rest making a feast of the pile of seed which had been strewn onto the ground.  It was suddenly very obvious that these birds had raided by feeders, spilling all but the last remnants out onto the ground and then making a clean sweep of the detritus on the ground.  I should have known that this was the probable cause since I’ve run into the practice by the grackles in years past.  Generally, the only way around it is to leave the feeders empty for a week or two until the grackles grow tired of the sparse offerings and move on.

       As we headed out to our grandsons’ weekend ballgames, we stopped off at the Subway sandwich shop along the way to pick up lunch.  Here we had out second photo-op of the day, a handsome Hermit thrush.  I shot the photo seen here, but now I have to be perfectly honest.  I played the avian photographer’s counterpoint to the famed Civil War photog Matthew Brady. 

       Brady managed to capture some startling photos of the horror of the war, often by moving the corpses of the soldiers into a more dramatic setting.  Well, when we found this poor thrush, he was actually on the sidewalk, an apparent victim of a window strike.  Obviously, he had not been there long and still looked very much alive…..except that he wasn’t.  With a little careful creative posing, I took the liberty to memorialize the bird as he was in life rather than the tragic end that he endured. 

        Bird deaths resulting from window strikes are estimated to exceed 970 million individuals each year!  Only deaths by feral and domestic cats comes close to this as far as “unnatural” deaths are concerned.  A sad end for a beautiful bird.