"Rocking Robin" or Tales from the Bird Sactuary

Back in the day, I lived with a roomate who was a birdwatcher. I was just as suprised as everyone else when I discovered that birdwatchers were not just fat, balding old men, but could also be cool, hip young flight attendants! Well, recently I have been thinking about birdwatching again because of all the bird activity that is going on around my house.

And to my dismay, I have started to hear MANY birds chirping at night lately. I thought birds were only active during the day, but have found that is not the only case. They do this to mark their territory from other predators, or they may be babies who are chirping for their mommies. I am trying to learn how to ignore them, but some nights, it is like a bird symphony!

It seems like every day, there is some new type of bird hanging outside my window. I have seen this:

A wood pecker (not entirely sure, but it sure looked like one!)

and this:

A red-breasted robin

and I constantly hear this (even during the day!!!!)

An owl (I'm not sure what it looks like, so I picked the creepiest looking one! Did you know that in Mexican culture, the owl is considered a symbol of death? It is bad luck to come into contact with one)

That reminds me, I have two owl stories:

When I was a kid, my mom told me this story about my grandma and an owl. In our old house, the dining room window was a up high because it was a 2 story house. One early evening, my grandmother said that she was sitting in the dining room, when all of a sudden, an owl flew right to the window and stayed there for a few minutes. The whole time, it had it's wings outstretched, and to her, she said it seemed as if it was trying to fly into the room. Naturally this FREAKED my grandma out, and she went and grabbed a broom (and I am sure a rosary!) and yelled and prayed for it to go away. It did, but the experience always made her shiver when she thought of it.

My second owl story occured about a year or so ago. Rich and I were driving home at night, and while we were driving up one of the streets to our house, our headlights shone on an owl that was just sitting in the road! As we drove closer, it would not move and just sat there, looking at us. Of course we were intrigued, so Rich got out of his car and slowly started walking towards the owl. Just then, the owl spread it's wings, and for a split second I thought of my grandma. Oh no?! Would it try to fly at our windshield? What actually happened was that as it started to fly away, we realized that it had a LIVE MOUSE IN IT'S CLAWS! We must have come upon it when it had just captured it's prey. Crazy!

All this bird activity has made me interested in learning more about bird watching. Who knew? I am not sure if our yard is somehow becoming a bird sanctuary, but if it is, I might as well be prepared! And I hope I don't see anymore owls. Those birds just creep me out! Any birds creep you out, or do you have a cool bird story to share?