The Bushtit vs. the Elastic

BirdNote^®

The Bushtit vs. the Elastic

Written by Bob Sundstrom

This is BirdNote!
[Bushtit chatter]
 Bushtits are tiny birds of the Western United States, about the size of a kinglet. A BirdNote listener, Catherine Alexander, recently told us of her encounter with a Bushtit. The story is best told in Catherine’s own words:
 “Down in the Bay Area, there's a park, and sometime in the past, someone had tossed a sock into the branches of a tree there. It must have been awhile back, because that sock was close to disintegration now, hanging in a grey clump with chaffs of thread and elastic sticking out all over.
 And this Bushtit came along, looking for that perfect bit of thread with which to weave its nest. [Bushtit chatter throughout] The Bushtit grabbed one of those frayed bits of elastic and pulled. And pulled. And pulled. The elastic, however, was still attached. Bushtit pulled, flapping full-speed reverse. Elastic stretched. Bushtit pulled some more. Elastic stretched some more. Bushtit did not let go. Bushtit did not let go even as its wing-power began to fail and the elastic slowly, inexorably, returned to its original length, Bushtit in tow.
 So the Bushtit tried again.
 The score while I watched: Bushtit 0, Elastic 3.” [Bushtit chatter throughout]
 Catherine thank you for that story!
 Have you seen something amusing or inspiring in the world of birds? Send us your tale at BirdNote.org. I’m Mary McCann.
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Call of the Bushtit provided by The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Recorded by G.A. Keller
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2010 Tune In to Nature.org           May 2010

ID# 071207BUSH2KPLU            BUSH-03b