Looking out my Backdoor: Slantways, like a crow

That morning, while eating a plata de fruta on the patio, ten feet from the incoming tide, a family of Tenates, Grackles to you and me, swooped onto my table. They look like ill-groomed clowns, like they got up on the wrong side of bed and forgot to comb their hair.

While I believe sharing food is good and honorable, these birds are of the crow family, and like their northern relations, are unrepentant scavengers. I invited them to leave. They grinned, all six of them, and perched on the chair opposite me.

I laughed. I enjoy the antics of these birds. They seem to go about their lives with a “...