My grandmother used to shoo away blue jays from her bird feeder, declaring them to be bullies. And I’ll agree that blue jays can be noisy, aggressive birds. But they don’t hold a candle to the quiet menace of the mourning doves who inhabit the Sonoran Desert.

I was sitting at my desk this morning, sipping coffee, intent on my computer screen, and looked up to see four mourning doves sitting on the back wall directly outside my window. Not in front of the empty bird feeders that are another 20 feet further down the wall, but in front of the window where I sat at my desk. I made a mental note to fill the feeders with the last of the bird seed I had in the house a little later, and returned my attention to the screen.

When I looked up again ten minutes later, there were six. Not standing sidewise as they generally do when they are walking along the top of the cinder block wall, but hunkered down and looking directly in my window. Weird, I thought, before I looked back at my screen.

Five minutes later there were eight, and now I am seriously creeped out. “Um,” I said to the dog, “maybe I’ll just fill that feeder now.”