bird calls

I love listening to birds (as long as it isn't 5 AM and i'm trying to sleep!). When i got here this morning, i could hear a cardinal. for those of you who don't know, a cardinal has a 2-tone call. high-low. very imitatable by a human. i ended up calling to the cardinal til i got in the house. but it made me think of something that happened when i was a kid.

When i was 14, my brothers and i had 4-H calves. (Did i ever tell y'all i grew up on a farm? It might explain some of my insanity, lol.) The layout of the farm was such that to get to the cattle shed you had to walk west from the house to the barn, then turn south towards the cattle shed. you couldn't see the shed until you'd turned by the barn.

one morning that summer i was walking down to the cattle shed when i heard a cardinal. i hadn't gotten to the barn yet. it was a game with my brothers and myself to see if we could keep the cardinal calling until we were bored. So i called back to it. It called back. This went on for several times, until i turned the corner by the barn.

There, i discovered my brother (2 years younger than me (i was 14 at the time) who has a wicked sense of sarcasm, and will ride anybody if he gets the chance), calling back. This one time, he was unaware that i wasn't a real cardinal, and i hadn't realized he wasn't a real cardinal til i walked 'round that corner and saw him with his lips frozen in pre-whistle mode. Maybe cardinals are TOO easy to imitate, lol.

(and no, no pics. i forgot to load pics on flickr, so you'll have to wait til tomorrow)