Brownie and Other Wild Birds

(Photo by Dawn Pisturino. Copyright 2023 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.)

This little fellow freezing his tail off in 26-degree weather is Brownie, a curve-billed Arizona thrasher. He’s cold and hungry, waiting for his meatball. Yeah, you heard me right. Brownie likes meatballs, and when he shows up looking for food, he gets one-half of a mini meatball. He grabs it with his bill and carries it away, sometimes with a smaller thrasher hot on his trail. Sometimes the smaller bird gets it, and Brownie has to do without. When the two had a baby bird during the summer, the baby would run up to Brownie, shake his feathers, and shriek like a maniac. He would keep doing this until Brownie fed him. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. Before the rains came, though, he was getting very aggressive with the other birds. I watched him viciously attack a sparrow who was encroaching on his territory after I put out birdseed. He held him down with his claw and pecked him, while the poor bird was screeching for dear life. Thankfully, the little sparrow managed to get away.

Back East, where there’s plenty of water and vegetation, birds thrill us with their birdsong, beauty, and peaceful demeanor. They are equally beautiful and melodic in the Arizona desert, but drought and sparse vegetation can make them competitive and aggressive. They begin to prey on one another. We ended up with no baby doves last summer because predators kept attacking the nests. My husband and I were heartbroken.

Buddy is a dove that hangs out on our property. In 2014, he was attacked by a hawk and managed to get away. But he had a huge gash in his breast and had difficulty flying. There was nothing we could do to help him so he hung out under an oleander bush, and we made sure he had plenty of food and water. Miraculously, he survived. His feathers grew back in, leaving a big black mark where his wound had been. But we can always identify him as our little “Buddy,” and he almost always shows up for feeding time. When he doesn’t show up, I worry myself sick that something happened to him. But he’s strong and healthy and gets right in there with the other birds and seems to get plenty to eat. He had to learn to be assertive to survive.

I’ve never been able to get a good photo of Buddy. I was already outside with the camera taking pictures of the snow on the mountains when Brownie showed up. He very politely posed for me!

Dawn Pisturino

February 17, 2023

Copyright 2023 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.

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