Re: Owlet, and Towhee Behavior

["Russ Palmeri" <rpalmeri@mindspring.com>]

Sheila,

I have a song sparrow who does the same thing to my truck parked in front of
the house, except ours was pecking. We now have towel wrapped around each
mirror to prevent both bird-doo on the car, and damage to the song sparrow.
I saw a bluebird doing the same earlier this spring.
We have an indigo bunting who sits on our deck rail and flutters into the
kitchen windows. I put paper on the windows, but he flutters to the paper,
hangs on, and pecks at the window anyway.  If we put one of our (indoor)
cats on a chair next to the window, he moves to another set of windows and
repeats the behavior. This goes on all day.
We have come to call him "Mr. Boinkers".

Russ Palmeri

Russ Palmeri
Asheville, North Carolina
******************************************
Fog and rain, the sky
touching the new green treetops,
a lone warbler sings


----- Original Message -----
From: "Sheila Denn" <denns@ils.unc.edu>
To: <carolinabirds@duke.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2001 10:32 PM
Subject: Owlet, and Towhee Behavior


> My boyfriend and I were on campus in Chapel Hill this evening when the
> owlet was out -- what a treat! We got there after he had already made
> his way back up the tree, so we didn't realize he had fallen out. We
> were hoping just to see one adult, we certainly didn't expect to see the
> whole family!
>
> We saw a strange bit of behavior from a male towhee while we were down
> at Emerald Isle over the weekend, just wanted to know if anyone else had
> ever seen anything like it. This male towhee kept hopping onto the door
> of our parked car, right in front of the side mirrors. He would look in
> the mirror, then hop on top of it, then hop down again and look in the
> mirror. Then he'd hop across the front windshield, and do the same thing
> on the side mirror on the other side of the car. He did this four times
> while we were packing the car to go home, and in fact he wouldn't move
> even when we were opening the trunk of the car and putting things in. He
> only moved when we closed the trunk. He wasn't pecking at his reflection
> or being aggressive, he just seemed very curious about the mirrors.
>
> Sheila Denn
> Chapel Hill, NC
> denns@ils.unc.edu
>