Avian Neighbors and...
Ivars Balkits
All over our farmed desert, scattered green plants are pushing up without the benefit of hardly any rain this winter. Cottonwood are leafing out. Yucca are bulging with new clownish heads of still crew-cut leaves. Mustard, that opportunist, ranges along ditches and underground irrigation lines. In our back yard, the peach blossoms on the tree in the backyard have blown out; the fruit are already the size of peas. Must be spring in Deming, NM.
Along with spring: bird-song, and plenty of birds, most of whom have been with us all winter.
White-Winged Doves, pale-bellied, larger and fatter than Mourning Doves, make a big hoo-hooing all day around the house and along the electric wires parallel to the lane. One of them sits on a post supporting the open-weave roof above the rear patio. She has been nesting for a couple of weeks at least, as still as if made of ceramic.
Other doves spoon in the pine trees.
Gambel’s Quail daily skitter across in front of the car as we pull up the drive of the house at dusk and early morning. Some go aloft sailing into the mesquite bushes. One or two panic and skitter the other way, reverse direction again, and then dive into the dry gramma grasses. One day, we came across one dashing across Monte Vista Road in that vertically-held position of the species. Suddenly it tripped at the edge of the ditch and fell flat on its beak!
Never seen anything like that from a bird.
Crows, of course, and in such multitudinous murders, glean pecans after the harvests out on Columbus Road, the road to Mexico. About twice the size of a crow, an occasional Raven makes a noise up in the cottonwood trees beside the house. I had heard the call before, but was unable to place it with any bird in view. Then it appeared and its identity was unmistakable. Large, blue-black, and it was voicing the Latvian name for raven: kraukli.
Kr-auk-k-li. An interesting tonal quality to it hard to imitate with this human larynx. Kr-auk-k-li.
Wrens galore, a few nesting in the lanterns on the front verandah. An occasional house finch with red throat and head. The blackbird with the freakishly long tail we saw feasting on spilled dog kibble in the Wal Mart parking lot: a Boat-Tailed Grackle.
Our friendliest or at least most fearless guy is the Curve-Billed Thrasher hanging about. About the only bird that feeds on the seed egg we've hung in the pine tree outside the kitchen window. Drinks from the water dish. Fixes his red-orange eye on us while we are washing dishes by the window.
We do not have a picture of him, unfortunately, but we do of another avian neighbor...
This bird preys on brown people migrating to find better habitat. It has no brain of its own, but is operated remotely from a station on Hermanas Road, half-way to the border with Mexico. Here it is in its nest:
