The Common Towhee

Fri, Mar 30, 2007

Is fascinated with mirrors, particularly the passenger’s side mirror on my wife’s Civic. I see a male quizzically and somewhat aggressively pecking at its image there, sometimes even immediately after I pull up in the driveway. When I lived in Florida, one similarly assaulted my then vehicle’s mirror, but that one had a chrome-like exterior which was peeling off, and I assumed it was attracted to the shine.

This eminence rouge (Pipilo erythrophthalmus) is also an aggressive scratcher of the ground, and I’m concerned that it’s seeing mirror fauna (see Borges; also Wolfe) in the ultraviolet. (Hawks, I read, may able to see rodent urine trails in UV.)

Also, Wednesday’s edition of Lost (“worst episode ever”) was perhaps an homage to EC comics.