Cat's Cries

Spotted towhees are funny, colorful birds that live in our yard. 

None of the pictures in this post are my pictures. 
I'm too slow with the camera.

They are hoppers, popping all around the gravel and deck, and then jumping into the creeper vine where they rummage noisily behind the thick leaves. The whole fence shakes and the vine trembles as they forage for bugs under leafy cover.

They make cat meow calls, very feline sounding. When I clean the birdbath, too close to their nest in the shrub near the bath, I hear them complain irritably, mewling like Jim's Siamese cats used to.

The red eyes are a telling feature, and the long tail.

They fly, but they are ground birds. They nest on the ground or low in shrubs. When they are aggressive they hop rather than fly at an intruder, and the other day as I was out in the garden I heard their loud cat's cries and saw a bunch of them right behind me, hopping all in one direction.

Their catlike screeches were loud and agitated. They kept jumping along the ground going toward the patio and mewing. And then I saw it -- a snake slithering in the gravel just in front of them. They were clearly herding it away.

No idea what kind of snake it was, but here's one like it.

Because they nest so low to the ground, snakes are their main predators. This one was sent packing. It quickly found a safe spot deep inside the stones of our low patio wall. It's still there, I think.

For all of my effort in creating a garden and claiming a place outside that is mine, this little encounter reminded me it is not my patio, not my garden. 

I am a guest in their world.