This Place is for the Birds

The birds on the UCT campus are zany. The campus is pretty densely packed and there are lots of paved areas where people eat outside. In addition to the students everywhere there are birds doing strange things all over the place. For those of you who have, like me, been annoyed by the squirrels at Mizzou, these birds are much, MUCH worse!

First, there are the African geese. In order to understand the abnormality of their presence, allow me to explain that there are no bodies of freshwater on or near campus. The closest things to goose habitats are the small fountains and large puddles on campus, with the ocean across town as the nearest large body of water. The geese, however, have found a home on campus. Today as I was making the hike up the hill, I saw three geese on the top branches of an evergreen tree honking loudly at each other. It was a really amusing picture to watch these large birds on flimsy branches making all sorts of racket.

Next, there are the blackbirds. I don't really know what kind of birds they are, but wherever there's food, these birds congregate. They remind me of seagulls because they eat ANYTHING. I've seen them eating apples, french fries, crumbs, orange peels, random bits of sandwich, leftover Chinese food, leftover Indian food, and they even drink spilled coffee off the sidewalk. In addition, the like to use the fountain on campus as a giant birdbath, which is pretty funny to watch.

The most annoying birds on campus, though, are the pigeons. Pigeons are, to quote my father, urban turkeys. They're fat, slow birds that are often unable to fly due to their incredible girth. The ones on our campus have a greater color range than I've ever seen, including gray, brown, tan, white, black, and even a few that look sort of reddish. The pigeons have similar eating habits to the blackbirds, so no food is safe from them.

The pigeons, however, have made inroads where the other birds haven't: the pigeons have gone inside. The doors to the social sciences building are always standing open, so the opportunity was there, I suppose, but the pigeons have taken to living, eating, and flying around inside the large open spaces of that building. I'll be sitting on the stairs inside eating lunch with my friends, and pigeons will be swooping just inches above our heads. They threaten to steal your lunch if you look the slightest bit distracted, and they have even begun infiltrating the lecture halls. In the lecture halls on the second and third floors, pigeons actually fly around the students heads during class. I'm always concerned that I'll be inside, minding my own business, and have a pigeon fly over me and poop on my head.

The birds, I suppose, are a risk of going to school on an urban campus like UCT. Still, I don't think I'll ever get used to that look in a pigeon's eye when it is threatening to steal my lunch.