With a round purple grape in hand, Albert Walton ducks out his front door, staring off to the west.
“C’mere,” he suddenly calls out, quickly sitting down at a bench on his front porch of his S. Main Carthage home. He continues to look to the west. “C’mon… got a snack for you.”
Unseen but not unheard, the cries of birds in the back yard rise in both pitch and volume.
“They’re coming,” Walton says with a big grin. He turns back toward the increased bird sounds. “C’mon… snack here… c’mon guys.”
Almost immediately, a wild robin, hopping from the distant yard at a good clip, suddenly halts about a foot away from Walton’s feet. There, it cocks its head sideways. Calls out. Looks at Walton with its left eye; its right eye.
“C’mon,” Walton urges. He raises his right arm slightly, fingers still clutching the juicy grape. The bird calls out its familiar cry, hops over to Walton’s foot, flaps its wings three or four time to propel itself up to Walton’s knee, and deftly snatches the grape from Walton’s fingers. It then turns tail and flies over to the street curb, prize in beak.
In his chair, the longtime Carthage resident and Purple Heart recipient from the Korean War chuckles deeply.
“It’s pretty amazing,” he says.
For three years, Albert and his wife, Bonnie, have hand-fed undomesticated Robins from either their front porch bench or the more comfy swing in the yard. At first, the birds would only feed if either Albert or Bonnie threw the fruit on the ground. But later, they ‘upped the ante,’ so to speak.
“Last week, Albert was out in that swing and a Robin flew in for a snack, landed on his knee and grabbed it. It was wonderful.
“They’ve taken them from my fingers, too, but it’s his thing,” she said, grinning and gesturing toward her husband.
A few of the birds have gotten so bold they now stay on his knee or even thigh, pecking at the grape still clutched in Albert’s fingers, eating and swallowing bits and pieces until there’s nothing left.
When asked what Albert feels when these notoriously shy birds hop on his leg, “I think it’s quite a thrill.”
He feeds the fowl at least once a day, sometimes more, and there’s a bowl of grapes sitting near the front door. He’s got the birds so trained that, at the sound of the front door opening, their songs will spike and one or more of the birds will come into sight, looking for the familiar form of Albert and his tasty treats.
