There’s one particular jay in my back yard that pretended to be a hawk for over an hour this morning, practicing his hawk-scream until it sounded pretty good. For a while, the other birds stayed away — which was perhaps the jay’s intention: less competition for the food — but familiarity breeds contempt, and after a time the finches started to feed anyway. Now I am wondering whether that jay is working for the hawks, to desensitize the small birds to that sound. He was too busy calling to actually eat, and none of his family were there to take advantage of the situation he had made for them. Or is faking the sound of a hawk a sort of hate speech, and the finches just stayed away because it was vile?
Fridays are my only day off, for certain values of “off.” I don’t do school work unless I have to, and I don’t do any writing business, unless there’s a good reason — oh, and working on a story doesn’t count as writing business, and neither, apparently, does posting here or on Patreon. So, yeah, today is a work day, just a very light one.
Jays: you never can tell what they are thinking. 🙂