Bird Brains

Upon walking to my front door yesterday, I noticed several red feathers (I'll assume from a male cardinal) in the middle of the sidewalk, just at the edge of my front porch. There weren't many feathers (about a dozen), and there was no corpse there, so I don't think it was the result of a neighborhood cat. Maybe the bird decided to preen itself up on the gutter, conveniently centered on the walk, and got a little too enthusiastic with its grooming, but I don't know bird psychology.

The one that really freaks me out is the birds (species unidentified) that somehow cling to the bottom of my window frames and peck or pull at the screens. (They do not fly into the windows.) This happens only on the east side of my apartment, not the north nor south sides. And, since I moved in in July, not the spring, I figure they're not trying to build nests with whatever might be dangling there. It disturbs me to hear noises that I worry might be critters inside my apartment walls, and then I ponder how their little birdy feet could cling to the window frame and what on earth they want with the screen. I suppose, if I were really curious, I could borrow an extension ladder (the windows on that side of the apartment are on the second floor) from work, schlep it home, and look at the screens close up, but that's an awful lot of effort for someone like me. I'm more the type to wait and see if PBS airs a documentary on the subject sometime in my lifetime. (Incidentally, there was a documentary called Bird Brain of Britain which was interesting, and one of Jeff Corwin's episodes featured a crow that could open a digital combination safe by pecking at the lock.)