7 thoughts on “Birds”
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Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
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Do not picnic under this tree.
Yeah, the sidewalk underneath it was pretty well Jackson-Pollacked!
I like that. Are those Starlings?
Not sure what they were – not doves, not grackles, maybe sparrows? – but there were a lot of them, all clustering in the bare tree.
Sgt “Tippi” Mom?
From the silhouettes, they look like they might be cedar waxwings. Waxwings are very sociable birds and typically stay together in large flocks as they migrate, so that fits in with the image as well. Waxwings love to eat all kinds of berries. At our old house–in Austin, not that far from you, Sgt. Mom–we had a lot of giant ligustrum trees around and when the waxwings arrived, they’d pick them clean of berries within a couple of days (if not within hours). And, yes, the deck and driveway looked very Jackson Pollacked.
The waxwings are very attractive birds, but they have an, um, alcohol problem. In their mad consumption of berries, they wind up eating a lot of fermented ones and get roaringly drunk. (It’s very common. Just Google “drunk cedar waxwings” for stories and videos.) The sad thing is that they drink and fly, and often fly full speed into windows. Frequently the results are fatal. One spring we found six dead waxwings on our decks within a few hours in what we called “Waxwingaggedon.”
You are probably right about them being a flock of cedar waxwings – the tree wasn’t a regular roost, they were too small to be doves – and spring would have been the right time for a flock to be migrating.
It was an amazing sight, the branches all filled with birds, and the mono-color effect against the foggy sky. They all took off about a minute after I took pictures.