The Birds On My Deck

 

House Sparrows fighting

            I have always noticed that, whenever my family puts out leftover bread on our deck, the birds always reach it first in the early morning. They create a ruckus of sounds at around 6-7 AM as they fight over measly morsels of food. Let me give you a comprehensive timeline of their breakfast endeavors.

At around 6 AM, a few birds(scouts, you can call them) from a variety of species come to survey the deck for any food. If they find some, they give a single, screeching call as a way to quickly tell their flock that they found food. They immediately fly away afterward. The most common species of bird that I have noticed doing this behavior is the Blue Jay, but I have also noticed other species such as Sparrows, Juncos, and Red-Headed Woodpeckers doing this too. Blue Jays tend to send only a single scout, while all others send at least two or three.

The scouts give information to their respective flocks about the morning food status. If there is found to be no food, the flocks arrive at the deck at around 6:45-7 AM and start loudly screeching, as a way to tell me and my family that we should give them breakfast. If there IS found to be food on the deck, the bird hordes arrive in great numbers, with each bird staking out their pieces of food as other birds fight for theirs. Some birds, such as the Juncos and the Woodpeckers, get easily spooked, and they often quietly come in and quietly leave without angering too many birds. Other birds, such as the Jays and the Sparrows, fight brutally for the smallest piece of bread. These pugnacious Sparrows are mostly House Sparrows, but there are occasionally some belligerent Song Sparrows and White-Throated Sparrows. Of course, these birds create lots of noise and chaos on the deck. The Sparrows are all rogue warriors; seeing them fighting other birds of their own species is not uncommon. Young sparrows are not exempt from these great battles, with adult Sparrows often snatching bread right from their beaks. The Jays, on the other hand, rarely engage in conflict, and if they do, it is always toward another bird species. They get a piece of bread from the deck and fly to a nearby tree or bush where they eat peacefully with others.

From 7-7:30 AM, the battle lessens, and the number of birds actively fighting decreases, with most of the originally bellicose birds gathering food elsewhere. This is when the Juncos come in great numbers, but instead of fighting, they eat in harmony. Food quantities drastically decrease during this time period, showing peace was better than war.

My deck is a great, but unlikely food source for my backyard birds. All this bird behavior occurred because my family threw our leftover(good for birds) food scraps onto our deck regularly, so I’m pretty sure this behavior would be different in different parts of the US. Birds are interesting creatures, like humans; they enjoy dramatically fighting over tiny items that have little significance.