The Birds!

So I went to the park today to practice my tennis skills only to find the courts filled with five year olds, some playing better than I can. To my defense, that's not really all that hard, but oh well. That ruined my big plan for the day, so I drove over to the park down by the river and took a nice power walk around it.

I talk to animals. No, I'm not crazy a la Dr. Dolittle, but I appreciate them. There are ways to communicate even without speaking the same "language." Anyone who knows another language can understand this concept well. I can usually tell when an animal is upset and when it's time to back off.

Anyways, about halfway into my walk, a black bird with some weird red-orange-yellow marking on its tail feathers starts squawking at me right? It wasn't a mean squawk, but it sounded like a warning to another bird that maybe he felt threatened by me or something. Well a couple hundred yards later, out of the blue, either that bird or another of that species flies up and hits me in the back of the head.

Needless to say, I felt a little like I was in Hitchcock's classic movie. In talking with others, I probably got a little too close to the bird's nest, though I have no clue where it would've been since I was surrounded by trees. A friend at work said that it was probably a Red-Winged Blackbird and is apparently notorious for being extremely territorial. The only problem with that is that it really doesn't look like the bird I saw. The territorial bit definitely fits though.