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favorite bird

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  • 06-02-2004 5:31am
    #1
    BEAT
    Hosted Moderators Posts: 5,945 ✭✭✭


    What is your favorite Bird or feathered friend?

    Mine would have to be the Snow Owl, such a beautiful creature.


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    #2
    ConallOM
    Closed Accounts Posts: 153 ✭✭ConallOM


    One of my favourite birds used to be the Magpie. When I was around 10 or 11 years old, I climbed up to the top of a tree and peeked into a nest of their's. It was so inaccessible (it was tough getting up there) and so admirably constructed: it was well-wedged up there with a tough prickly roof above it and fine grasses were woven in as a lining. There were seven beautiful blue-green speckled eggs in it and the coup-de-grâce – the tinsel top of a milk bottle. Some hate them and call them brazen but I saw them as daring. Their unusually long tails make them appear exotic and the black feathers actually have a green sheen to them when seen close-up.

    My attitude has shifted a bit all the same. A week ago I planted a couple of scores of cuttings in the field out the back. Some of them had been there all winter but they can be hard to see when the weeds grow high in the spring and even at the moment they can be hard to make out. They were in danger of being trampled.

    My solution was to put a bit of coloured tape on each one so's they'd stand out. I didn't have any so I borrowed a silvery tape from my neighbour and now they all have a little shiny metallic tag. And what did I discover yesterday? Those dirty magpies have been pulling at them! At least the blasted cats that dunk in my flower beds don't dig anything up. The fact that I lack the concrete evidence of having seen them will in no way deter me from allocating the blame in their direction. Same as the farmer, I now hate them for picking the eyes out of little lambs, stealing food from troughs and fouling where they can. They are dirty thieves. Their behaviour I see as brash and their cry a cackle.

    So what's my favourite bird? I need more time to think. Some day I'll get back to you on this.


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