yep, I was going to say it too. My favorite birds are fried chicken and grilled dove
I miss the bobwhite quail we used to have in abundance here in East Texas, before the fire ant invasion wiped them out (and a big thank you to the environmentalists for banning DDT - the only thing that held back the fire ant march that started in the late 50's). My home town adopted the "Bird Sanctuary" title back in the late 70's or early 80's so the days are gone of the 10 year old with a BB gun getting paid a nickel per j-bird to eradicate them from the grape vines of the little old widow lady down the street. The pigeons really started getting to be a nuisance in town by the 80's and different ideas were tried to "humanely" reduce the population. They wouldn't listen to my idea of a dozen or so well trained 10-12 year old snipers with modern pellet guns working for a dime per kill.... with free pellets
Other than the nuisance birds that tend to coat our windshields and side mirrors about two months per year with that nasty paste, I do love our hawks and road runners. We had a pair of road runners nest in our back yard about 10 years ago, and on really cold mornings with a heavy frost they would make their way to the roof top in early morning and stand on the gable with their wings completely spread into the rising sun like a phoenix. That was a sight to see. And the hawks are just amazing birds to watch. A couple of years ago while a buddy and I were out in my front yard we heard a couple of hawk screeches overhead and a pair was circling and ascending nearly out of sight. When they appeared to be two tiny specks, it became a single speck as they "locked up" and fell like a rock. At about 500 feet they unhooked, spread their wings and caught air, then immediately circled straight up again. Rinse and repeat. They did this three times and their drop zone didn't change more than a couple hundred feet at most. After the third time they popped the parachutes, they (slowly) flew off together. And, even though they aren't seen a whole lot lately, the owls are still around. Back in the mid 70's I was hunkered down in a little patch of love grass on a hill side blowing on a coyote call. I was an "underpaid" assistant farm manager for our local college, and with my family living on the farm, coyote calling was one of those truly simple pleasures I could afford. Since the coyotes weren't responsible for our calf losses (I found it was a pack of feral domesticate dogs), I rarely shot the coyotes .... but man I loved to pretend to be their prey and call them. Anyhow, while I was calling the sun had already set and there was barely enough light to see movement. Blowing my last few low death squeaks with my head tilted down so the brim of my hat would shield my hand movements, I heard a loud swoosh of air and my black cowboy hat was suddenly ripped off my head from front to back. I was able to turn around to see the biggest danged owl silhouette I've ever seen .... with my favorite hat in his talons. I did see him finally shake it loose a couple hundred feet away with only a couple of minor marks. I still have that old hat, and there's so many other battle scars on it that the owl talons are hard to distinguish.
Sorry for getting long winded, I didn't think I was much of a bird fan until I had a few days to think about it.
jd
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There's just some things best left unsaid on the internetsuperhighway.
