Ms Haricot is exhibiting typical female traits, namely, it’s a constant battle to teach a man how to groom properly and dress right!
~VOW
A number of years ago, one cold December night…
It’s the middle of the night. I hear the cat fighting with a critter. I hear wings. Damn, that’s a big bug. WaitAMinute - it’s December in the great white north - we ain’t got any bugs. Hey, Mrs. - I think there’s a bat in our room!
“A WHAT?!??!” Zoom - covers go over her head. I turn on the bedroom light, and there’s a bat doing laps in our bedroom.
I try swatting at it. Nope. Don’t have anything up in the bedroom to catch it in - tried pillow cases, sheets, etc. Too bulky. At the time, our bed was sitting at an angle, so there was a triangular area between the headboard and the walls. One of our cats was guarding that area. The bat lands on the baseboard on one side of the triangle; walks along the baseboard. Cat sits there watching it. Bat gets to the other end of the baseboard and flies off. “What the hell am I feeding you for? Your job is to catch small furry things, and you let it WALK RIGHT PAST YOU!”
Finally, I decide to risk leaving the room to go down to the garage to get a fishing net. Come back up; bat does a couple more laps, then flies behind our 8-foot tall book case. Damn. I finally have something to catch it in, and it’s hiding. OK, let me nudge the book case; scare it out. Nudge the book case and hear a “crunch” (little crunch - it was a Little Brown Bat). Aw, crap. Well, let’s make sure we put the poor thing out of it’s misery. Give the book case a good shoulder-block. I’m sure it’s dead.
One problem - an 8-foot tall bookcase, fully loaded, is too damned heavy to move. I now have to take ALL of the books out of the bookcase so that I can move it to get the Bat-Corpse. Between that, and the adrenalin from the hunt, I could forget about sleeping the rest of the night.
He says that a lot I bet.
Perhaps I should read more of Beck’s posts, as I’m beginning to attract a menagerie on the back deck every morning when I put out peanuts. There are three scrub jays I call Ray, Fay, and May; at least three squirrels: Earl, Merle and Thug; and three very large crows: Moe, Joe and Cousin Itt. We do have a lot of critters for an urban area, including 'coons and 'possums, but they have so far stayed away. The jays and furry rats have gotten very brave and are unafraid to have a close encounter. The crows, being the brain trust of the bird world, are more leery of hoomans. I know better than to try to treat them as pets; I’m just helping them through the winter.
You’re a good guy, Chef!
I also have a murder of crows who hang around my house. It’s always the same family. They all have a white feather or 2 on one wing.
They are so intelligent. Mr. Wrekker has autofeeders in his Beagle kennel. I know when it’s fixin’ to feed the dogs by the Crows activity and cawing the others in. They get their share by swooping in and grabbing a piece or 2.
The Beagles don’t care they’ve seen them for years.
I love crows.
I never really gave crows too much thought, until I was close enough to,see how HUGE those things are!
《shuddering》
Are you sure they aren’t leftover pterodactyls?
~VOW
I feel the same way about their northern cousins, the ravens. Winter birds in Alaska consist mainly of ravens, magpies and black-capped chickadees. A lot of people don’t like ravens, but like all corvids they are really smart (as you mentioned) and they engage in play behavior. There are videos of them sliding down a snowy roof, then flying back up and doing it over and over again just to amuse themselves. The scrub jay can memorize something like 200 places where it (and other birds/animals) has stashed food.
I can’t remember where I set my beer down 5 minutes ago.
I have some Bluejays every year.
Undoubtedly the bully’s of the bird world. They even scare the squirrels eating dropped pecans.
Jerks. But beautiful.
I call blue jays “pterodactyls”, especially since it seems like their screeching call sounds like something from a cartoon pterodactyl. 
Bluejays are masters at swooping down at high speed and turning back up at the last minute.
It’s part of their bullying behavior. They terrorize the smaller birds at my feeders.
In the UK, bats in churches (belfries or not) are a real pain.
Not because they do anything really evil, but because they are a legally Protected Species.
Bats and the law
- Advice
- Bats and the law
In Britain all bat species and their roosts are legally protected, by both domestic and international legislation.
This means you may be committing a criminal offence if you:
- Deliberately take , injure or kill a wild bat
- Intentionally or recklessly disturb a bat in its roost or deliberately disturb a group of bats.
- Damage or destroy a place used by bats for breeding or resting (roosts) (even if bats are not occupying the roost at the time)
- Possess or advertise/sell/exchange a bat of a species found in the wild in the EU (dead or alive) or any part of a bat.
- Intentionally or recklessly obstruct access to a bat roost.
Please refer to the legislation for the precise wording - the above is a brief summary only
Of course, no church would want to do any of that!
Advice from Archdeacons is to: “Baptise them. Confirm them. And you’ll never see them again.”
I have a type of feeder that closes the ports when there is something other than a small bird getting seed. It’s the only squirrel-proof feeder I’ve ever seen, and it keeps larger birds out, as well, as the tension can be adjusted.
Pm me the brand name of that feeder. I need it.
I think I sent it. Haven’t sent a PM using the new system.
I got it.
We had an indoor/outdoor cat when I was growing up, and the jays used to pluck fur from him. When Dad left a patch of grass uncut in hopes of reseeding the backyard, Nappy would hide in the tall grass to get away from them.
Blue Jays are pretty, but they sure are assholes.
My MIL used to have one living in her back yard, who’d come to the door and yell at her for breakfast service. 
They belong with red-winged blackbirds and yellowjackets in the “Nature’s Little Assholes” category.
Please add brown-headed cowbirds to that as well (also called grackels, and brown-headed blackbirds). I had my feeder right next to the house where the kitties could watch the goldfinches, house finches, cardinals, and chickadees eating. But I had another feeder further out. The cowbirds would eat everything in sight around that feeder, leaving the squirrels and jays confused. I finally found a bird food they would leave alone but it is relatively expensive. It’s Scott’s Songbird Selections. The cowbirds would cruise it but not eat. They came back every couple of days to see if I had switched food. Smart, irritating birds.