Bird Brains

The Early Bird Catches The Asphalt?

I'm driving to work the other day, and while stopped at a light, I can see up ahead two birds dogfighting in and out of some shrubbery by the road.

I'm not a birdwatcher, so I couldn't say whether these were flickers, thrushes or orioles, but they were fairly aerobatic, gray colored, with broad wings with a white stripe down the center.

The light turns green, and I approach their shrub, and they're still doing Immelmans, hammerheads, etc. One seems to be dominating the other, in that it's the one doing all the chasing.

Suddenly the lead bird dives directly for the road, not three feet in front of my truck's grill. I lose sight of the pair, but looking back in the rearview mirror, I spot a spray of feathers expanding in my wake, and a grey lump in the road.

So, here's the question...

Did the lead bird sucker the other into an ill-advised maneuver, leading to it getting squooshed under my tires? Or, was it the lead bird that had a brief moment of glory facing the steel-belted radial?

Hell, maybe both birds bit the big one. I didn't see one fly off afterwards, though they were fast enough I might have missed it.

At any rate, there's fewer birds in the air than there were the day before.