A large grackle bangs into the window pane but flies off. I suppose the spider web decals put up last year have worked, for fewer birds strike the pane in their flight, unlike last year when many did and a cardinal died on impact.
The decals look somewhat like a spider web, but I tell myself that they wouldn’t fool me if I were a bird. Why, I’d probably fly straight into one and suffer the collision. If birds have better eyesight than humans, they would presumably detect the false web and ignore it.
Birds are smarter than I think. After all, who on a morning walk stumbles into a long spider’s thread laid out overnight from tree to shrub? At least a thread is not a web and easily reparable for the spider who must be watching in consternation at the clumsy destruction of his handiwork. And then, returning to the house after the morning foray of thread breaking, I glance at one of the spider web decals and imagine that an insect sitting on the pane has been “caught.”