Mr T Rides, I Mean Flies, Again...

For those unfamiliar with the unique and unforgetable Mr T, his story began over a year ago in the Garden Foes Forum. Link provided in case you might want to read about his prior mischief:

http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/548658/#new

For those who know and "love" that adorable little fella with the raptor complex, you'll no doubt be happy to hear that he's back, alive and well, in my backyard garden, and does not appear to have acquired much in the way of manners during his sabatical. Likewise, while I don't know where T has been during his recent absence, anger managment therapy seems unlikely.

I haven't been in the garden much since last summer as I've been trying desperately to clean and organize the house. This morning it was 60deg out with brilliant sunshine and spring bulbs have begun to open along the garden paths so I could not resist the urge to go out with my camera and take a few pictures. As I sat on a bench nestled amidst the peaceful, smiling daffodils I suddenly became aware of the rustling of bird's wings only a few feet away. I turned eagerly hoping that I might be so lucky as to snag a shot of the visitor before he flew away. What I saw defied belief...

I turned just in time to see a little grey titmouse. He did, in fact, start to fly before I had a chance to focus the camera, but he flew, not away, but AT ME! That's right. Over and over and over again! The really bad photo attached is one of the few quick shots I got of him stoping briefly in a nearby tree before again lauching himself at my head. Several times he stopped for a moment on the limb of a young tree beside me. He was facing me and only about 3 away, a perfect shot, but each time, before I could get the camera into place, zoom, he'd fling himself off the limb, tuck his wings and dive for my head. Even though I wasn't conciously afraid of him, as he approached my head I could not resist the urge to close my eyes and protect my head.

A few times he flew over to a tree in the forest nearby only to be seen again sailing right for my head, wings tucked at his sides, gliding, dropping like a missile with a beak on the end and always aimed right for me! This continued for maybe 10-15 minutes. Then he sat in a tree in the forest nearby, scolding me, squaking and fussing endlessly. (I didn't have the lens I'd need to get a photo that far away.) I don't speak "bird" but in any language he was clearly saying, "YOU have to go away from here and do it NOW!"

I decided that I must have gotten too close to a nest. That seemed the only reasonable explanation for this behavior. (But those of you who know T, no doubt realize that he never felt the urge to be constrained by reason). I looked all about the area but could find no sign of a nest anywhere nearby. When I came back inside I checked the internet to see where they build their nests. According to the literature they nest on the limbs of forest trees and as high as 30ft up. That seems to rule out the possibility that I was too close to a nest. I was on the ground. The trees in my yard are small - 15ft or less. There is a forest behind my house but not so close as to make me a threat to a nest 30ft up!

I STILL can't believe that sweet, tiny, adorable little fella with those big black eyes ATTACKED me - and completely unprovoked. On several of his bombing runs he practically mussed my hair up! He was that close! He just kept circling, diving, stopping momentarily to eye me from nearby lauching pads...and diving again.

I know tufted titmice are supposed to be quite amiable, but I think we seem to be growing a new strain of titmouse down here. I go to great lengths to feed "my" birds. I like to think of them as my friends, and I don't want to seem paranoid or anything, but, I'm really starting to think that T doesn't want to be friends. I think he still wants me to move... and now.

Well, many of you said you'd like to hear if he ever returned. Frankly, I thought the matter was pretty much closed, just a bizzare anomoly. But, he's b-a-a-c-k!

Since the above incident, I've been working in the garden, I haven't been "attacked" again since the morning incident;however, T has followed me all around the garden. Whenever, I look up there he is in a nearby tree (again these are all small 10-15ft trees, or less) and always watching. Earlier this morning (when he attacked me) I was wearing a grey shirt, roughly the same color as a titmouse with black pants - but surely I'm too big to be mistaken for a titmouse.

Oh my gawd! My MIL will be thrilled to see such a flurry of activity. Oh scutler, poor you.

Equil, I have to go back out there again in a few minutes...if I don't make it back, tell the authorities it was that 'bleepin' bird!

Really, I still cannot believe his behavior. Has anyone ever heard of a Tufted Titmouse attacking a person? I've heard of mockingbirds attacking people who get too close to a nest, but not titmice. And I have a whole yard full of mockingbirds with nests in every tree in the front yard but they never bother me. This really is like a scene right out of the movie The Birds.

And let me tell you, I don't care how small and cute they are, when they dive off of a tree limp, aim straight for you, and fold their wings in to make a more streamlined missile effect it's a scarey moment. I kept trying to get a good photo to show you guys but try as I might I could not keep myself from raising my arms up to protect my head as he zoomed in close.

Two words: Voodoo Doll.

Oh yes! My MIL is most certainly going to be pleased when she comes over tomorrow. This titmouse and your accounts of your interactions with him were the light of her life there for a while.

I'm thinking you're in need of a little protection while in your back yard. Have you thought about suiting up to be able to coexist with your foe?
http://www.blade-empire.com/Knights_Edge/Armor/Lion_Crest_Suit_of_Armor-Decorative-KE-6008.jpg

Hey Joseph, she tried that last time remember. The voodoo doll didn't work.

Four words: INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH voodoo doll. LOL

How about enlisting the aid of the Tae-Kwan Do-Do birds (ref. the movie called Ice Age)? They were a rough bunch.

I dunno. Maybe if we all whipped out our sewing machines and began collectively creating Titmouse dolls, maybe... just maybe she'd have a fighting change.

Well, Scutler, you two do have a history. And apparently he/she has a memory. I can sit here in Texas and say "How wonderful that he/she is back!". 8^D

Flame Thrower or Bird shot enough is enough.

Scutler,
What color is your hair? Were the bird feeders full? 30 years ago in El Paso I had hummingbird family that would dive bomb me while I hung out clothes if their feeder was low. I also suggest a hard hat. LOL
Sidney

I think you should post this on the bird watching thread. They would be very interested in this story. Maybe have some advice or things they have tried.

LOL!! Mr T is definitely Wild life!

Just be glad its not mr. copperhead .. at least I didn't pack up a boxed lunch for the snake and give it directions to charleston.

X

Hi Equil! I hope your MIL will get some joy from the return of our crazy titmous. I enjoy hearing about her, and I've been meaning to thank you for the kind words you wrote [on the thread about the controversy surrounding those fabulous photos of deer on the woodland path]. It made me feel very good to read how much you and your MIL had enjoyed my thread. Thanks.

And might I add that the suit you recommended should certainly work well to protect me from the bird. It does look a tad bit heavy though, and I'm not too sure how comfy that would be for gardening. Not to add that it might be more than a little impractical during our summer heat waves. Still, not withstanding those minor problems, I think I could use one. Do you have a link for where to order?

Anything for you dear and please do keep up the good family entertainment for me and my Mom-
Costume Rentals
(843) 296-6309
1108 Inverness Ln
Hanahan, SC 29406

My MIL laughs her rear off when she reads your threads and let me tell you she all but gasped for air with her hands clasped to her cheeks when she read the thing was dive bombing you. She called me a few days ago to see if you had posted any updates but you hadn't. Tomorrow, she will get an update.

Joseph,

Ok, I'm prepared...

Thanks, Equil. You amaze me. I didn't think you'd be able to come up with a vendor for that thing. That's a good one.LOL

That such a good visual image of you MIL reading about T's return. There has been another siting BTW... Oh, sorry it took me so long to reply, I'm just having such a hard time keeping up with everything.

CJ, you can say that again (wild life). That little fella certainly has a lot of personality. I'm starting to like him (right now while he isn't actually destroying anything, esp my house).

Dyson, do you happen to have a spare flame thrower that I could borrow? I have some bird shot but the flame thrower sounds like more fun. Anyhow, it's illegal to shoot a gun in city limits. I don't think we have any rules concerning flame throwers.

Sidney, that's a tough question (color of my hair). I've had people look right at me and ask me what color it is - and I don't know either. When I was trying to buy a clip-in pony tail thing I was surprised to find that the color that matched was strawberry blond, so I guess that's it.

When I forget to fill the hummingbird feeder, my hummers find me and dance around in the air in front of my face apparently to get my attention. It's such a cute maneuver that I always drop everything to fill their feeder. Once they caught me as I was running out to go to work. When they attempt to communicate I'm just putty in their hands so I was late to work (and missed a meeting) because I had to go back and fill their feeder.

The titmouse's behavior is not the same though. I do so wish that I had been able to get a pic for you guys. He wasn't dancing in front of my face to get attention he was attacking me. I had the camera in hand and kept trying to get a picture of the "incoming", but at the last moment I always drew my hands up to shield my head. It was an instinctive movement that I could not stop.

I can still "see" him dropping from the forest limb, folding his wings flat against his body, and gliding toward me beak first. And he kept moving, diving at me from different directions so that I'd need the ability to spin my head 360 like Linda Blair in order to keep up with him. He never got in my face. He kept going for the top of my head. Several times I was sure he was going to land on my head and/or peck me in the head. It's hard to explain. I wasn't really afraid of him, but it was eary when he'd be above my head and I couldn't see him. I could hear his wings and all but feel the wind from them but didn't know what he was doing or going to do.

Here is another of the quick photos I snapped that day. Here he is in the rose hedge about 8ft away from me. I didn't have time to try to focus on the shots and there were branches in the way. You can see that he is turning his head sideways to look at me. Moments later he came at me again.

The hard hat, now that's a good idea, though.

I dunno what to say. I don't particularly think I'd appreciate being dive bombed more so because I'd be afraid the twisted titmouse would do it to some poor unsuspecting kid. I'm afraid that if this titmouse was at my house and was dive bombing me, it would be voodoo doll time.

gardenglory, that's a good idea. I didn't realize we had added a bird watching forum. I'll have to post a link over there. Maybe some of the folks over there will have some ideas about what's going on with this silly bird.

I have 2 theories on the matter:

(1) after the 2nd man was attacked by a sting ray a while back(which should have been an anomoly), a wildlife specialist on the news said that environmental changes are stressing wildlife to their limits and that this strange behavior is their reaction to that stress and we will likely see more strange and atypical behavior from various species. Well, there you go. T's behavior is definitely atypical. Maybe he's heat impaired.

(2) I keep finding myself referring to his behavior in terms like "audacity". I kept thinking "I'm a human; you are supposed to be afraid of me." That brought me back to the same expanation as before. Maybe doing the outragous is the point. Males of each variety of creature have their way of showing worthiness. Mocking birds sing lots of different songs; the more sounds they can make, the more attractive they are. Maybe T is displaying his courage to impress the ladies. It is that time of year after all. And he always seems to have such a mischeivious look about him when he's up to these antics.

Here is yet another of the photos taken that day. I got several in this position. As you can see I had more time to focus these. That's because, while I didn't realize it at the time, in these pics he's eyeing the DOG. The dog was a little farther down the path from me, lying in the path waiting for me. T never attacked the dog, but in these photos he's looking at the dog so it appears he decided against that maneuver!.

As previously mentioned I didn't have any kind of zoom lens on the camera that day (in fact I can't put the zoom lens on because I can't get the other one off but that's another topic). The only reason I could get such detail is because he was SO incredibly close to me.

Equil, ROTFLMAO!!!

That is such a cute photo!!! (I'm not going to tell my dog Widget what you did to his toy bird. That would cost me too many $$$ in dog therapy.) "Lethal injection" was my fav.

Glad you liked my contribution. I may not be able to take good photos but I learned how to use Photofiltre a little bit. I had fun.

Maybe...Mr. T is a frustrated male out there looking for love in all the wrong places. No seriously. Some woodpeckers peck away on metal chimney caps to claim territory to attract mates. They call it drumming. Maybe your twisted titmouse thinks he's a woodpecker and is finding your property incredibly inviting and is planning on staking claim again this year and you just happened to be in the way?

BTW, there are no children here. My neighbors has a bunch of teens; they can fend for themselves. There is a little boy on the other side but he is almost never outside, and when he is there is always an adult with him - these days titmice are the least of the problems small kids have to worry about. I guess I figured that T's aberant behavior was focused on me only. None of the neighbors feed birds or otherwise interact with wildlife so I doubt the birds spend much time in their yards. T seems to pretty much live in my yard.

My raccoon Heide returned recently. This morning she trashed the feeder. When I went out aound 7AM T was out there flying back and forth from the little tree to the feeder pole - which was leaning at a 45deg angle. He'd perch about 1/2 way up the pole, tilt his head sideways, and look down rather forlornly and in apparent disbelief at his damaged feeder lying empty on the ground beneath the pole. Then he'd fly away to the little tree only to return again a few minutes later as if to see if the feeder was fixed yet. I was sitting just maybe 15ft away. He didn't attack me. Just kept flying back and forth, sitting on the pole, and staring all teary eyed at the damaged and empty feeder.

I felt so sorry for him (and the cardinal couple) that I dropped everything and filled the feeder for him and put it back on the pole. (I still think there's a chance that he fell out of the nest as a baby and hit his head.)

Yeah, I think he's trying to show how BAD he is.

X, you are still upset about that copperhead, are you? ; )

Now all of this brings me to...

This morning after I filled the feeder for T, I went over to the other side of the yard (to the same path where he attacked me BTW) and sat down in my chair to photograph the daffodils (again). A little while later I became aware of an odd sound. I couldn't quite place it. I was concentrating of my photography, just background processing that odd sound. Then I realized that the sound was coming from the bottom limb of the little tree beside me. I turned to see T sitting on the limb just maybe 2ft from my head. He was holding a sunflower seed in his claw against the branch and hammering it with his beak. He always does that to break the shell but I'd never heard the sound from so close before.

I was amazed to see him sitting beside me. There were plenty of other places for him to sit. I turned the camera toward him gently, hoping against hope to get a photo to show you guys. Incredibly, even as I raised the camera toward him, he sat there looking at me. For a moment I thought I had gotten the photo but it was an overcast day and just as the flash went off he hopped over to another limb. He didn't fly away as any normal bird would surely have done. He just hopped over about 1.5ft. Even then I thought I might have gotten part or all of him in the edge of the photo. Unfortunately, I don't see any sign of him in the pic. I started to delete it but decided to show it too you because even though it's unfocused, it shows how very close the branches were. Those blurry lines in the foreground are the branches where he was sitting.

I sat for a little while longer taking photos. T continued making runs between the feeder and the tree beside me, stopping to eat his seed. He never tried to attack me this time. But he is one odd duck.

Well, now we get to the crux of the matter, he thinks you are his provider, and has a smitten crush on you!
I do believe if he could he might curl up on a pillow beside of you and sleep, sorta like Henry does me.
Maybe he is your watch-bird and those dive bombs were alerts you just didn't percieve.
Just a thought,
;)

Ah, animal magnetism in its purest essence.

Scutler:
I am a late reader as a newbie to DG...what an amazing story. The first thread was something else...I was laughing so hard too. After all this, I do think you will miss Mr. T. when he is gone for good. You two are bonded...for better or worse, I might add. I am sorry, though, that your experience has been so expensive! WOW! I will be watching for your future experiences with all your other followers...Did you ever get video of Mr. T. in action?

Ummm, I don't think she will miss Mr T but then... er... uh... maybe I'm wrong. A little bird told me scuttler was dreaming of taking classes on the sly in anticipation of his passing-
http://www.americantaxidermy.com/

That would be one way to keep the memories...and not just in scuttler's mind! Poor Mr. T. He may be around then for a very long time!

Ya, she could pose him like a Gumby or Pokey figure and sort of prop him up near a window beak down near her window frame like he's having a perpetual go at her screens. Wouldn't that be an ice breaker for a cocktail party at the scuttler house!

Definitely, screen has to be included...

Scuttler, sorry to have fun at your expense. You may be outside being attacked by Mr. T. as we speak. :>)

Let us know if you are ok.

Equilibrium, you quack me up. Ooops wrong species of bird! LOL