Birdy

birds from the nest built in the tree over the roof are just getting up onto the edge of the nest and tottering when one day I notice a beat-up tomcat sitting on the porch roof and staring up at them. I’m not sure he can jump from the porch roof to the roof of the house, but I throw some stones at him till he goes away. It’ll really be dangerous when those young ones are starting to fly and flutter to the ground. I can’t think of any way to keep that cat out of the yard.
    The female flight cage has sixty-two young birds in it already and the new nests are filling. It looks like even more birds than the year before, and that’s not counting the babies of my fliers. The feed bills are enormous, but I have enough money. I just tell my father how much I need and he gives it to me.
    Those babies of the fliers are flying in and out of the aviary on their own. There doesn’t seem to be any trouble. They all come into the aviary to eat and roost at night. The mothers are generally onto second nests but the males fly with the young. Some of the young males have already started with their burbling, warbling songs. The father males still come when I whistle but the young don’t pay any attention to me at all. It’s marvelous that they’re so free; practically no strings tying them to the cage. Most of the females don’t go out much because they’re busy with the nests. I can still whistle down the one female who built her nest in the tree over the house. She’ll come for a brief minute and eat from my finger, but then fly back to her nest. It’s good to see how conscientious the birds are with their babies.
    The young ones are very much like wild birds. They’ve never known what it is to be closed in a cage. They fly farther from the yard thanthe others; they also tend to flock more than the parent birds. The parents don’t seem to have any instinct for flocking left, whereas these young ones flock almost like pigeons. They’re much more easily frightened and will spook up in a flock to the tops of the trees.
    All the birds have started eating the food I leave outside for Perta and the other young female. I decide to move that food inside. The only power I have left to bring them into the cages at night now is the food. After my evening feeding of the breeding cages I drop the wires of the outside door so when the birds come in to eat they can’t go out again. This way I can keep some count of them. As far as I can tell, there are already about twenty flier babies. The rate of reproduction is nothing like those in the breeding cages. There are more losses all along. For one thing, I don’t take out the eggs as they’re hatched. This means none of the nests have more than three or four birds.
    I don’t like it when the young fliers treat me as any other enemy. They’re almost like my own grandchildren, but they don’t recognize me. My dream is built on them but they are completely separate from it; they’re practically wild birds.
    – I probably built myself mostly to ‘beat’ my father; not just ‘beat him up’, but to be better at being what I thought he was. So, I became like him. We become like the people with whom we compete. It’s like cannibals eating part of an enemy warrior to absorb his courage. Crazy stuff!
    Then it happens. I’ve just come out to the morning feeding when I look up at the nest in the tree over the house. There’s that cat on the roof and he has one of the young birds in his mouth. He’s reaching out to knock down another of the young birds roosting on a branch just below the nest. The mother bird is frantic. She’s flying at the cat and the cat swings at her. I don’t see the other young one.
    I pick up stones and start throwing them. I yell, but he ducks and keeps pawing at the branch, or, when the mother bird comes near enough, bats at her.
    I whistle for the mother to come to me and she flies down to my finger but jumps away again before I can catch her. She flies back up to the tree. I run into the garage and get out the ladder. My father comes out. He helps me put the ladder so I can climb onto the porch roof. My mother comes out. She’s worried I’ll fall and that my father will be late for work.
    I climb up onto the roof. The cat is holding his ground but backs off a little when I stand and start reaching out for him. Now I’m up there, the mother bird is even braver in her attack on the cat. He still holds the body of the young bird in his mouth. The