I saw him perched on a limb near the feeder, not 10 feet from the kitchen window. He is our resident male bluebird and he was keeping a close (bluebird) eye on things. He watched the feeder as his potential mate for this spring had her breakfast. Then he watched as she sailed over to the birdbath for a quick drink. I noticed that he cocked his head occasionally, but was often looking off to the side, not straight ahead. No detail was missed by this eagle-eyed bird. Then, quick as a wink, he sailed down and gobbled up some kind of insect, or maybe a worm. You wouldn’t think that on a cold winter morning there would be bugs out and about. But there are, and if one moves, he’s toast if my bluebird is around.
Birds rely on both sight and sound to stay in touch. They don’t have cell phones, you know. If one flies out of sight, they call to each other in order to communicate.
Back when there were quail I was always amazed that when a bird called to covey up, the others in the covey would fly to almost the exact spot of the calling bird. And they were often hundreds of yards away when they took flight. Their ears were almost like sonar devices in pinpointing exact locations and distances.
Watching birds is fascinating. They probably think the same thing about us.
