Back to the beginning..... Birdlet

So after having failed at teaching any of the house lizards much of any impressive tricks, I decided I'd bond with a shama, because I'm no good at meditation but I clearly needed to get out of my own head more. Thus, I decided that making friends with a yard dinosaur might be a good way to do that.

I didn't know of any shamas in particular, but we've got the sort of yard where they can be found. And about 20 years earlier, when digging for some garden plants out in the front  yard, I noticed that a shama had come and perched about 6 feet away, to rush in if I uncovered any tasty bugs. This behavior, and boldness, made me think that if one actually had a supply of bugs, they could probably acquire a durable association with a shama. So I filed that away in my mind for later.

Birdlet, getting better about personal space

So by March 2019 as I had come up against hard limits in lizard-training, I decided that maybe I had enough mealworms left to make friends with a shama.  (per mention in the last installment here). The idea of one of them landing on my finger and singing and just generally being convivial seemed like fun.

So yeah, in lieu of meditation, which I'm no good at, I'd just go sit out in the backyard whistling and throwing worms in the air... behavior which would definitely get you thrown off a public bus, but there was nobody to see me.

At first. Then various birds took notice. One was a beautiful shiny male shama, who decided my presence back there was a terrible breach of the natural order, and the fact that I had mealworms somehow made it worse. So he'd use his "monster alert" razzberry voice to tell me to get the hell out of his yard, hopping around and alerting the other birds that there was a predator in the yard. This was to be his main interaction with me for a very long time. I called him Bird, as in "hey beat it Bird, I'm looking for a FRIENDLY shama." But he was determined I wouldn't find any, and did his best to prevent it.

However, there was a shy little dark bird which looked SORT of like a shama, dull color but same basic coloration and smaller. I assumed it was a chick, because it seemed curious and didn't always heed Bird's monster alerts about me. She'd take a tossed mealworm, and liked them a lot. (Bird would too if I threw one far enough, but would then return to scolding me).  So over the course of a week or so I just tossed them less far, until she'd take them out of my hand. And when nothing bad happened, more familiarity developed, and I could go down and whistle and she'd fly over, despite the scolding "monster! monster!" calls from Bird, who I assumed to be the chick's father. (Not yet understanding that shama dads don't much care if chicks survive after about 6 weeks of age).

And pretty soon, she was fine taking them from my hand

So I had the beginning of a friendly relationship with Birdlet, so named since I assumed she was a chick (hadn't figured out her gender yet), and an antagonistic relationship with Bird, who decided it was his job to chase me out of my own yard on general principles whenever he saw me. Which was every time.

Birdlet, though, would land near me or on my foot or knee, and give a plaintive little soft  "foooo" call which clearly only I could hear. And over a year later, near as I can tell she only uses the "fooo" call to prompt humans to do stuff.