Every late spring, I look up under the roof of my patio when I leave my home and began to grumble because I’ve noticed that the birds are starting to slowly build a nest. Usually, that meant by early summer I would be disturbed from sleep every day for weeks until the birds leave the nest in the middle of the summer.
Barn swallows are making their home under my roof of the patio. Without fail, every year they come and they build. Even if its been knocked down. There doesn’t seem to be anything that will prevent these birds from starting all over again and continuing the cycle of life.
But this season, it hasn’t been so much of a bother in the very early morning hours as I have had to move my sleeping quarters into another part of my home for other reasons.
As I understand, barn swallows build their nests up high so that they can stay away from predators. I also found out that they are good because they get rid of insects.
Anyways, yesterday around 9:00 AM, the birds were just making so much noise and usually by then the babies are sleeping and the mommy bird is long gone. But not then. I didn’t know what was going on.
When I opened the front door, there were probably about five of six birds flying all over the place. They were definitely upset. Across the yard I saw three cats.
On the property, we have at least a dozen stray cats that do not belong to anyone who lives here. All because of a certain few resident started to feed them from their patios. Now there are cats everywhere, and they shouldn’t be here. But I’ll digress from that gripe.
Anyways, it took only a few moments to realize that the birds were feeling threatened by the presence of these felines and they were in protective mode. From the front door I watched the scene of these birds going after the cats. It appeared that the cats were only trying to lounge in the shade because the weather is so freakin’ HOT now. Even at that hour of the morning.
Birds were flying in circles. Swooping up and down… literally attacking these cats until they had left the area away from the nest that I seem to be have hosting for years now.
It was so funny to watch! These tiny little birds were just totally destroying these cats. Coming from up high and swooping down on them from behind. I watched one bird literally went into a dive bomb on one cat that the absolute surprise made the cat flip from its tail over its head and land again but facing the totally opposite way.
Eventually the other cats would attempt to come to its aid. It watched from along side a tree as one bird continually kept on another cat. Eventually it decided to spring into action and pounce.
But the pouncing cat totally missed and ended up jumping high over the back of their poor counterpart. It looked like this cat that decided to leap could have jumped over seven cats stacked up tall. That’s how high it jumped!
EPIC JUMP.
I went on to my patio to get a better look. The birds that were swarming did not bother with me. They know that I am not going to hurt them. So they kept flying over my head and coming to the nest, feeding the baby birds, and then going back to join in the battle against those pesky cats.
Nature can be a lot of fun. It can provide tons of amusement sometimes. I don’t really know how long I was out there watching it all before all cats who were being attacked sprinted off and hid in a sewer opening. The birds then were wanting to come back to the nest but noticed that I was sitting there and just circled around and around until I had gone away.
My only regret is that I didn’t have a video camera. Oh well!!
Dambreaker 