War of the Sugar Bush

Posted on April 24, 2004 in Creatures

Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball
And tear our pleasures with rough strife…
  – Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress

We thought it was injured. We saw it fall from the upper branches down the front of a sugar bush. I stopped the truck and approached as the ball of grey and faintly orange feathers bounced off the face of the plant, into the low spring growth. “Don’t worry,” I cooed as I reached into the tangle.

The feathers jumped and rolled onto the boulder-growing dirt road. The mass split. Two birds panted for a second, facing each other. Then they locked bills. I stood over them as they tussled for a minute or two longer, looking back at Lynn and Donna. “Can you believe this?” I asked.

The weaker hemisphere seceded from the globe; they became two flyers again. One jetted off and the other pursued.

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Identification: ash-throated flycatchers, which are territorial little bastards. Hawks fear them.

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Good accompaniment to your field guide: BIRDER’S HANDBOOK : A FIELD GUIDE TO THE NATURAL HISTORY OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS