Cambridge Chronicle Covers the Bird on my Head story
Here is a link to a sweet story
in the Cambridge chronicle about the bird that imprinted itself on me
last week. I posted this story on my weblog and it was picked up by a
few bloggers who found it amusing. One of them forwarded it to the
editors at the Cambridge Chronicle. It just goes to show how blogging
can lead to exposure.
This bird makes a cheep date
By Sarah Andrews/ Chronicle Staff
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Last week, Kathleen Gilroy had a bird on her head.
It all began while Gilroy stood chatting with a neighbor on
Chestnut Street. At some point during the conversation, a small, black
bird flew down to the sidewalk. After hopping around for a bit, it
glided up in the air and, in the words of Gilroy, “imprinted itself” on
her head.
On Monday, Gilroy recalled the dialogue that followed the bizarre
incident: “My neighbor said, 'I wish I had a camera.' And I said, 'Why
do you think this is happening?' And he said, 'I don't know, maybe [the
bird] likes you.'”
“So I walked around the corner to my house [on Magazine Street]
and the bird stayed on my head the whole time. I was just walking and
there it was, on my head,” Gilroy said.
While Gilroy admits she hasn't seen the bird in a few days, the
relationship did extend past the initial encounter. For three days and
four nights, the juvenile bird lingered in a tree in Gilroy's front
yard. And despite protests from Gilroy's English cocker spaniels,
Stanley and Dusty, whenever Gilroy would go outside to garden, the bird
would appear and perch on her head.
Figuring out how to get back inside the house was a task because
she didn't want to frighten or hurt the bird. Gilroy demonstrated her
removal method to a reporter.
She would start by putting her hand near her head to coerce the
bird onto her finger. Then she would place her finger near a patio
umbrella, at which point the bird would step off her digit onto that.
Then Gilroy would make a dash for the back door.
“At one point, it became kind of a problem,” Gilroy said. “It
wouldn't let me go back in the house … It really wanted to be with
me, but I didn't want it in the house. Again, the dogs were insane.”
At a loss for how to deal with her new friend, Gilroy turned to
cyberspace. As CEO of the Otter Group, a company that builds online
learning programs and information “blogging” networks, Gilroy is no
stranger to the “blogosphere” and keeps a blog of her own. To solicit
advice on the bird situation, she posted an entry aptly titled,
“There's a bird on my head.”
While at least three people have seen the entry and linked their
blogs to the page, Gilroy got only one practical suggestion.
“I would call the National Audubon Society,” an anonymous writer
wrote. “They have several rehabilitation centers that can care for a
bird that has imprinted itself on a person.”
Linda Cocca, the coordinator of the Massachusetts Audubon wildlife
information line, said Tuesday that she's heard of similar incidences
before and that typically birds that imprint themselves on people have
been caged or raised by humans.
But after viewing a photo of the bird, neither Cocca nor the
society's ornithologist, Simon Perkins, could identify the species of
bird, due to the poor picture quality.
But Cocca said she suspected it was a caged bird that had escaped.
The bird was too small to be a fly-ready crow and its beak was not
yellow, ruling out the starling option.
“It doesn't look like anything wild,” said Cocca. “[Caged birds]
are very used to people … they and wild birds raised by humans have
been known to imprint themselves on humans” though they can be trained
not to do it.
Contact Sarah Andrews at sandrews@cnc.com.
