Not wise to cross a red-winged blackbird
Fiercely protective species can fly beak-first at intruders
This week, the Star reported, the city has been warning people to beware of red-winged blackbirds. A local resident who spoke to my colleague Gilbert Ngabo said she’d “never heard of anyone being attacked by a red-winged blackbird.” Lucky for her. I had never heard of it either, until I found myself having to physically protect my family from them.
It was almost six years ago, on the Monday of the Canada Day long weekend, when we wound up on the wrong side of some of the most aggressive birds I’ve ever encountered.
Somehow I had gone my whole life up to that point in Toronto without knowing this particular kind of bird even existed. I assumed Brian Burke must have brought them to Toronto as part of his bid for “truculence,” which we were hearing so much about around then. But researching them afterwards revealed they’ve always been here. Lying in wait, I think. Anyhow, that day. My wife wrote about it on her blog at the time, and although I recall certain details differently (and vividly), I’ve looked at her account to refresh my memory.
We had picked up gyro sandwiches on Queens Quay for an early-evening dinner, and found a picnic table at the little park near the ferry docks to eat them. It was lovely — looking out over the lake, sitting in the shade and feeling the breeze, watching the boats go by.
Just as we were packing up to go, we saw a tiny bird perched on the edge of our empty stroller. My wife, Rebecca, was holding our infant daughter in her arms, our older daughter and son standing nearby. All of us were admiring how cute the little creature was. Suddenly, it hopped off the stroller and onto the front of our 4-year-old daughter’s shirt.
“Get it off me! Get it off!” she began crying. I tried to gently shake her shirt, so the bird would fly away. Its tiny talons gripped through the fabric. I kept shaking, ever less gently.
Rebecca was screaming at me, our daughter was screaming at the bird and I was shouting at everyone to relax while becoming a little frantic trying to get it loose. Finally, just as the little bird fluttered away to the grass, Rebecca started cursing and screaming some more.
A bird — not the tiny one, but a big one with red spots on its wings — was hovering behind Rebecca’s head, repeatedly running its beak into her. It flew away, then circled around and flew full-speed toward her face. Still holding our baby in her arms, she fell to the ground to avoid it.
I grabbed the older two kids and we all began to run. A second one of these birds came flying toward me, aiming toward my forehead like a kamikaze dive bomber.
I saw its determined eyes, its sharp little beak.
So I swung the plastic bag I was holding, filled with empty styrofoam takeout containers, making contact when the bird was less than two feet from my head.
It diverted course but appeared not to be wounded. I figured it was all the more enraged, though, as it circled back up into the air in what looked like the start of another run at us. We ran — all of us — away from the clearing.
Once my family was safe, I had to go back to retrieve our stuff. I did so carefully, creeping at first, and then running with a diaper bag over one shoulder and Rebecca’s purse over the other, pushing the stroller with one hand and swatting above my head with that shopping bag of garbage, like a castaway signalling to a passing plane. The whole time, two birds repeatedly took runs at me.
The other people around the park looked on and laughed. Oh, how they laughed.
When we passed the park an hour later, we could see people running around, frantically covering their heads and staring at the sky. The birds were still at it. Now we laughed.
It seems obvious now that both the birds and I were trying to protect our children. From each other.
But I was only trying to get away from them and their baby. Experts may advise just giving them a wide berth, and explain how natural and understandable their behaviour is. But we didn’t even know they were there until they started attacking, and they seemed more determined to open up our heads with their beaks than to let us get away.
Anyhow, since then, we’ll periodically be walking through a ravine or a park and see a bunch of people looking up in what appears to be astonishment and fear. And we’ll know: red-winged blackbirds. We usually turn around and walk, quickly, in the other direction.