Lots of other people seemed to have a similar idea, for the park was crowded. And the ducks were so happy to see us, that they got up and waddled toward us even before we got the bread out! They knew what was coming! And there were all sorts of ducks--white ones with red beaks or black bills (one of which kept pecking at the bag I was holding, hoping yummy crumbs might fall out the bottom), red-orange ducks, mallard and mallard-looking ducks, sea gulls, pigeons, sparrows, crows--all came over to noisily beg for their daily bread. As we watched, the sea gulls started bullying the ducks, intimidating them for their crumbs. One gull seemed to have enough. He was a very elegant creature, but mean. He took a dive away from the breadcrumbs, and snatched one of the begging pigeons right in front of us, dragged it in the water and killed it, before taking it out at the other side of the pond to share with another sea gull. That was the end of the gulls bothering the other birds as we tossed the crumbs, though!
After about half an hour there, we'd exhausted my stale bread and our free time. We hurried back to the Angelicum for a doctoral defense on the idea of uniqueness in the writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and then back to more normal sorts of end-of-day activities.
And that's a little bit of how I celebrated my dad's birthday yesterday!
3 comments:
Oh, hello, Eeyore!
The one thing I remember of the pigeons in Rome (it was 1997) was their reluctance to move off; you'd have to really jump to properly startle them. Pigeons back in Hometown Suburb are much more skittish.
It's nice to hear of improving weather, somewhere; we had more snow this week, and it's still chilly!
Snow is nice weather, too! None of that here, though.
Pigeons here love all the tourists, and anyone who might leave a few crumbs behind. Instead of flying away when you shoo at them, they mostly walk around in circles. And they don't seem overly skittish around sea gulls, either, which doesn't serve them well.
Pigeons in Japan are a little more wary, and almost always limp from their previous encounters with anti-pigeon wires or apparatus.
Here, they usually have all their toes intact, even to adulthood.
Oh, I didn't mean to give the impression that I dislike snow; quite the opposite, in fact! Some of the prerequisites for snow, however... they begin to wear one down, after a time.
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