Dad used to get us up at the crack of dawn every day, winter and summer without fail. No, it wasn’t the crack of dawn. It was even before the crack of dawn. We called that “dark thirty”. He would start out at the foot of the stairs with his official Marine Corps whistle. Then he'd come up and flip the light on and off. If that didn’t get us out of bed, he’d raise the windows and pull the covers off of us. I’m guessing now that he couldn’t bear to think that he was raising a bunch of lazy kids. I don’t think it was because he just wanted a bunch of kids to keep him company while he lit fires and drank coffee. If it wasn’t for 5:30 Mass, it was to do calisthenics before school. If we tried to go back to sleep, we got needled until we got out of bed. If we didn’t get out of bed after he got tired of needling us, we got fined extra chores and demerits. You might as well just get up. NO ONE got to sleep in, with the exception of Mom. After he'd let her sleep as long as he could possibly stand it, he took her a cup of coffee and some toast... every single day!
We’ll talk about “The Schedule of Merits and Demerits” on another page. Actually, there are several stories about being dug out of bed in the mornings. But, later. I just want to talk about birds right now.
Since those days, I’ve always had the habit of getting up early. I really do enjoy the peace with my cup of coffee, and I do try not to wake anyone else. When I was working, I’d get up at 4:30 or 5:00 every morning just to have that few minutes to read the newspaper and catch some of the morning news on T.V. before leaving for work. I’d sometimes watch re-runs of old sit-coms. Mr. Ed was one of my favorites.
Now that I’m retired, I still get up at 4:30, get the coffee going, work the crossword puzzle in the newspaper, and sit out on the deck to listen to the different birds wake up. There’s even one bird that starts making a racket at about 2:30 a.m. I have no idea what kind of bird would be awake at that time of day to make such a racket, but I do know it’s not an owl. Maybe the noisy bird is blind. The reason I know that there is a bird chirping at that time, is because when my Night Blooming Cerus is in bloom, I do get up to go out to watch and possibly take pictures. That’s when I hear the crazy bird racket. Later on, say around 5:30 or 6:00a.m. other birds start to stir.
I can identify a couple of different woodpeckers, mockingbirds and hawks. There are some that I won’t even to venture a guess as to what kind of bird. The sounds though, are spectacular. I can hear one of them calling cheap! cheap! cheap!. It’s answered by another that I assume is of the same plumage saying tofutti! tofutti! tofutti! ……whatever that’s supposed to mean. Another bird declares, purdy! purdy! purdy! The woodpeckers sometimes actually do sound like Woody Woodpecker.
About a week ago, I saw two piliated woodpeckers on the same tree. They looked like they were just hanging out looking for bugs. As they moved around the tree trunk, a third piliated woodpecker came into view. She was obviously the center of attention in that trio. What a beauty! These birds are about 19” long. They make a big racket when they’re sounding ……knock…knock…knock! Sounding just means that they are hammering (usually in the morning) on something hard and hollow to see who else is in the neighborhood. The smaller red-headed woodpeckers will get on the metal guttering on the house and pound away, to see who will answer. There is always an answer in the distance. This will go on for a long as an hour. The first time I heard this ritual I nearly jumped out of my skin. The guttering of choice happened to be just outside the window of our office. I was sitting here, lost in thought about something I was reading. You can imagine the machine gun sound that that small bird produced.
There are many varieties of woodpeckers in our area. The ones I mostly see besides the piliated and the red-headed are the ladder back and the Downy. They’re very small, and shy. I might not have seen them at all but for their shy little tapping.
There is a pair of hawks that have lived near by for many years now. They start their shopping at dawn. They make wide circles, and are nearly always together. They usually start making a racket when they find something. Sometimes I can see that they’ve captured a snake or a squirrel. One evening, while Roy and I were sitting out on the deck, I heard a mocking bird really fussing, and then I heard a hawk screaming back. Feathers started falling from above. As we followed the feathers up, we finally saw a mockingbird out on the end of a limb; a respectable distance from a hawk on the same limb. Apparently, the hawk had made a meal of one of the mockingbirds’ buddies or maybe its mate. The mockingbird was really giving the hawk a bunch of grief. The hawk answered back, and was more than likely inviting the mockingbird to dinner.
I still haven’t figured out what kind of birds says, “boogity, boogity, boogity, SHOOP!” It usually gets a reply of “cheater! cheater! cheater!” Apparently, those birds were influenced by the doo-wop and shoop, shoop songs of the early 50’s through the early 60’s. Possibly it has ties with the Rockin’ Robin. Who knows……….
Hank sits out on the deck with me. Since he doesn’t hear very well any more, I suspect he’s just hoping that the squirrels will wake up to play with him. He’s quiet and respectful of our morning ritual, but I suspect that if a squirrel went running across the yard, he’d have to start making a lot of noise, and run after it.
After we hear the first locust rattling, it’s time to go in the house. That’s the signal that the heat is beginning to climb. I’ll be back out there tomorrow, and maybe I’ll figure out who the “boogity, cheater, purdy and the shoop-shoop birds are. I even think there's a "she-bop, she-bop" bird out there too. I really want to see that one.
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