Day 201: The question was how a horse had gotten sixty feet up a Douglas-fir. I could hear it whinnying, over and over and over, clearly distressed by a lack of solid earth beneath its hooves. It was the first summer after my husband and I had taken over his grandparents' "ranch," a 10-acre spread with a pioneer-era house and no indoor plumbing. No one else in the family wanted it when the grandfolks offered it around. We jumped at the chance, moved out of a small Seattle rambler with all the modern conveniences and set up housekeeping with intent to improve the house or build a new one. It never happened, but that's not germane to the story. I was still trying to figure out how the horse got up the tree. Our neighbour ran cattle, but that soprano whinny wasn't coming from any cow. In any event, cows don't climb trees either, and the sound was coming from about halfway up the Doug fir behind the garage.
That was my first encounter with the amazing mimicry for which Brown-Headed Cowbirds are known. They can imitate a siren, a ringing telephone, cats, dogs, other birds and yes, horses, albeit rather high-pitched squeaky ones. There are no horses where I live now, but my Cowbirds mimic hawks and jays and, amusingly, jays imitating hawks, which Steller-fellers do quite well, thank you. By the time it reaches Cowbird pronunciation, a little has been lost in translation, but it's still recognizable and identifiable as a second-hand revision. The other distinctive trait of Brown-Headed Cowbirds is that between calls, they look up, as if searching the skies for flying saucers. "Hey, Joe? Do you know what them UFO things look like? I think I just saw one go over." Some people think they're pests, ranked right up there with Starlings, but I think they're funny. I mean, when I first met them, they were horsing around.
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