Brilliantly colored Hooded Orioles are summer visitors to the De Anza Cove Mobile Home Park.
They like my garden. Strewn with large blue Morning Glory, orange and yellow Nasturtiums, and Pinapple Guava flowers, it is irresistible to these summer vacationers. Each day they visit to poke holes in the sides of trumpet-shaped flowers to drink nectar, to munch on the edges of edible flowers, and to hunt caterpillars on the Bougainvillea inches from my windows. They announce their arrival with loud squeaks and rattles, fearless, not caring who sees them.
I can hear Orioles coming from a block away. I know what activity they have planned, by the time of day that I hear them and from which direction the call is coming.
I have several birdbaths around the house, where I can easily see them from the windows, but placed so that there is no confusing reflection of the bath in the glass. Some are set on high surfaces, some hang from wires in trees. Each kind of bird has a bath preference.
Most of the birds don't like to be in very deep water. They lean in from the edges of the bowls to quickly splash a bit, sending a fine mist into the air with frantic wing beats, and then immediately fly into a tree to dry off. The deeper the water, the more hesitantly they enter. The finches and sparrows usually bathe in groups. Their combined splashing helps to lower the water level to mid-leg depth, at which point everyone feels comfortable enough to pack in for a pool party. All this activity attracts the attention of other finches and sparrows who swoop in and sit impatiently on surrounding shrubbery and patio furniture to wait their turns. These birds will drink from almost any bowl, but prefer to bathe in the one that hangs in the pine tree.
The orioles like the bath that sits on the patio table. One male oriole is particularly OCD about bathing. Each morning between 9am and 11am, he comes squeaking into the patio and jumps into the bath. This Oriole will get into water well above his chest. Once there, he squats down a little so that the water is almost covering his back. He dips his entire head under the water. Unlike the other birds, who seem satisfied with a slight humidifying of their feathers, the Oriole will splash and dunk until I can see that his feathers are completely saturated. Then he sits in the neighbor's pine tree or in my Bougainvillea to preen. Sometimes he feels that his bath has not been thorough enough. He returns after a few minutes of preening to take a second bath. It doesn't matter how warm or cold the weather. But he does seem to be especially enthusiastic about a bowl of fresh water. Nor does he care that this is the area of highest activity in my garden. The bird feeder is there, so this spot is always full of finches, sparrows, ring-nected doves, mourning doves, possums, raccoons, cats, and even the occasional hawk hunting for birds. My front door a few feet away. Delivery trucks stop here to drop off packages. There is a steady stream of neighborly and and tourist traffic in the street. I often sit at my desk at this floor-to-ceiling window, and I know by their reactions that he and the other birds can see me. Although he won't come to the table when I am standing right next to it, he hovers nearby, screaming at me to get out of his way. As soon as I start up the steps to the door, he lands in the bath for his ritual.
Somehow I never get tired of this sight. I have pictures and videos of it. I'm glad he announces his arrival so that I can get into position to watch him.
I know where my Hooded Oriole lives. He (or maybe one of his descendants who grew up there) nests every year in my next-door neighbor's palm tree. Once the Oriole nest was not in the palm tree, but in the Ficus benjaminia a couple of doors away. I know where the nest is each year because the male sits in the top of the chosen tree and squeaks about it. Despite how obvious all this noise anf flashy colors is, none of my neighbors had ever noticed him before. It takes great effort on my part to get them to focus their eyes in the right spot to see him. That's a good thing. Few humans know how to comport themselves around birds without scaring them with staring, neck-craning, arm-waving, shouting, and other predatorial behaviors. I have learned that it's not environmentally sound to point out any bird's nest until it is empty.
Nevertheless, last year, I managed to not only get some neigbhors to fix their eyes upon the Oriole, but to appeal to management to save his nest and family from certain destruction. The park is managed by the city, which shows very little regard for its natural resources. The management contractor of this park shows even less awareness of the wildlife. The palm trimmers themselves could not care less about how many nests they destroy. Management consistently schedules palm-trimmers for nesting season. They arrived on the scene that year just after the Oriole and his mate had hatched chicks, who could be clearly heard chirping as their parents made trips into the palm with food. I have tried to be more philosophical and stoic about all the bird destruction caused by excessive maintenance of the landscape, but this time it was too much for me. I couldn't stand letting a bird that I knew personally having his chicks ground up in the wood chipper. Once I had shown them the bird, and they had finished expressing astonishment that something so beautiful and exotic lived in their humble park, my neighbor and one of the resident HOA board members and I walked to the management office to plead the Orioles' case. My neighbor had previously attempted to avoid the trimming by calling the manager, to no avail. But confronted with three distraught residents with pictures of the bird, he relented. It was just a family of five birds in one palm tree, and I know that this sort of destructive murderous landscaping is going on all over this park and indeed all over this unconscious city. I can't do anything about all those other birds, not yet. But I could do something about these five birds, so if I had done nothing I never would have been able to forgive myself.
The De Anza Cove Mobile Home Park has been on this land for more than half a century. In that time, many enormous trees have grown and many kinds of birds and animals have established permanent and migratory homes. The City's attitude toward these natural resources was clearly demonstrated in 2003, when San Diego's first move in its illegal eviction strategy was to cut down over TWO HUNDRED LARGE, 50-YEAR-OLD TREES. While the mobile home park was established illegally (with the City's blessing), the wildlife and vegetation not only has a right to be here, but also has no place else to go now that humans value waterfront property. The park must close in compliance with state law. It should be a matter of pressing concern to San Diegans, Californians, Americans, and the world, that removal of the mobile homes not entail the destruction of this ecosystem.