CHASE TIME

Rex Burress

Something darted across the road as I approached the Feather River Nature Center. At first, I thought it was a big house cat, but back in the brush a gray fox nervously watched me before running back across the road--with a scrub jay in hot pursuit!

Spring chase time, I thought, when everything is actively engaged in building a bungalow and defending it like some kind of special supermarket sale was at stake. Birds are the most obvious defenders of their nesting sites, but beware of mother bears and false black widow spiders, too!

I added the spider item, because once I was smashing baby spiders on the Nature Center desk, when mother false black widow, alias Steatoda grossa, dashed out and bit me on the wrist! “Take that, you baby killer,” she must have mumbled in spider talk! That hurt, for a couple weeks, but I lived. See her remains in a Center jar. Shame; bug-bombed for merely defending her hatchlings.

The scrub jay undoubtedly had a nest or fledglings in the area and even a fox will get bird-bombed by protective parents. During April and May during peak production, you can see objective behavior all along the river. Blackbirds are the fussiest defenders, dive-bombing nearly anything near their nest. Red-wing blackbirds along the river are noisy defenders, erupting in squawks if you're anywhere near the cleverly woven nests in the cattails. They are communal birds, like the acorn woodpeckers, and gang up on an invader.

Brewer's blackbirds are even more aggressive, and a hat-less person is in danger of having some hair removed! I trust they still nest in the bishop pines outside the Rotary Nature Center/Lake Merritt Wildlife Refuge in Oakland, CA and pick a person to strike...to the amusement of the staff.

Among the fierce defenders are the western kingbirds, ready to do aerial combat with any bird of prey that flies over their nesting territory. Even hummingbirds will attack an eagle flying over, and some have been reported as landing on the giant's head to annoy the raptor--but what eagle would stoop to eat a marble-sized infant?

So it's a spring-time sky-show to see the nest defenders harassing aerial intruders. Black crows get swarmed from blackbirds although crows gang up in large “murders” during the winter to attack hawks and owls. A group of starlings, or 'murmuration,' would seem to fit in the aggressive bird category, but those abundant dark birds are quite docile.

The entire Corvidae family, that includes crows, jays and magpies, are rather cantankerous birds prone to raid other bird nests. Ironically, a pair of scrub jays nested in our backyard plum tree one year, and some crows marched around the lawn pretending to watch for worms, but all the time keeping an eye on the jay. Those thieving rascals found the nest and stole the babies of one of their own kind! The jays hatched one this year, and their baby-care antics in our backyard is intensive. They have eaten all the snails!

The chase game belongs not only to birds and bears, but it seems the human sex chase goes on all the time! Take for instance, Sadie Hawkins' Day, where there is a role-reversal and females pursue males! That concept was created in Al Capp's “Li'l Abner” comic strip that ran from 1934 to 1978. On the annual November chase day, the boys were given a running start, followed by male-chasing girls. Daisy Mae after Li'l Abner was a regular feature in a story-cartoon with a glossary of appealing terms, like 'Dogpatch, Slobbovia, Double-whammy, and Kickapoo Joy Juice!' A theme-park and a movie have been made from those lovable images, but Sadie Hawkins tops them all. Let's hear it for when there were real comics and real country music story-songs!

“Not knowing the thing that's chasing you is a lot scarier than seeing it right in front of you.”--Oren Peli

“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” --Vince Lombardi

“If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one.” --Proverb

“With the catching ends the pleasure of the chase.” --Abraham Lincoln

“How lavish is Nature building up, pulling down, creating, destroying, chasing every particle

from form to form, ever changing, ever beautiful.”
--John Muir