Twitterpated

This furious male rufus-sided towhee spent more than four hours this morning hopping up and down the rungs on the climbing rose arbor outside my den window, trying to get the furious male towhee reflected back at him in the glass to answer his challenges. I enjoyed watching him, even laughing as he occasionally ratcheted up the conflict by fluttering at the window glass – thump! – but I felt sorry for him too. Plenty of good eats out there right now – the roses already have their first generation of nice, fat aphids -- so he ended up losing a lot of chow-time. Not to mention what the local female towhees must have thought of him.

“He’s a little ... um ... slow, isn’t he, Mabel?”