My Last Dental Visit Cleaned More Than Just My Teeth
I’ve been a bird nerd for as long as I can remember.
My grandma was an avid birder and a member of the Audubon Society for decades, and she passed on her love of birds to me.
So it’s no surprise that my dentist’s office having bird feeders outside their exam rooms made my last appointment a little less terrifying.
My hygienist navigated me through the maze of halls behind the front desk to a gray-on-gray exam room at the back of the building. And outside the nearly floor-to-ceiling window was an elevated bird feeder that looked like a yellow and green house straight out of Hansel and Gretel.
The middle of the house was a flat platform that held a large block of half-pecked birdseed.
“Do you ever see quail at the bird feeder?” I asked the hygienist.
“No, I think it’s too tall for them.” She answered brightly.It’s true Gambel’s Quail aren’t strong fliers. But I’ve seen them fly into trees when startled, and not much stops them from accessing their beloved bird seed blocks.I didn’t want to seem like a know-it-all, so I kept my bird facts to myself. I’d outed myself as a bird brain in the past, and it hadn’t gone well.
But when doves started landing on the feeder, I couldn’t help myself.
“Oh, we have some Mourning Doves visiting us,” I mused.
Soon, a Gila Woodpecker dropped in for a snack.
“I bet that woodpecker will run the doves off,” I predicted.
Sure enough, not long after the woodpecker landed, it bullied the doves and began methodically removing peanuts from the seed block.
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