An Iowa Garden

Wind is our constant companion here in Iowa, and this last three weeks a huge high pressure area camped over the western U.S. has been ferrying the winds high up into the Yukon, only to turn over the top of the Rockies and race down across the Albertan prairies to Iowa, blowing and blowing some more, dropping the temperature 60 degrees in 24 hours, turning the early greening grass back to ugly brown stubble, and trapping the garden halfway between winter and spring. The birds have turned sullen, ice is creeping out again from the edges of the pond, and the snowdrops are lying flat on the frozen ground, like they've been shot. On days like this, I run down my mental list of garden maintainance jobs for something to get me outside, which is how I find myself cleaning up and re-hanging the bird houses today. The oldest wren house really doesn't need cleaning; you see it stayed strangely empty last year. Each year, house sparrows try to take over the wren houses, even though the openings are too small; nevertheless the males stake them out, only to be driven away in short order when the wrens finally show up. Last spring, as usual, the house in question attracted a sparrow, and they have been working on this old house by trying to peck the opening larger for years, and I thought they must have finally succeeded, as on my evening walk, a male sparrow was sitting on the perch, with his head inside the birdhouse. Now I thought that was kind of cute, that he must be looking at the female on her nest, so left him be. The next evening Liz came on the evening garden walk, and the sparrow was there again, looking in the birdhouse. I pointed it out to Liz, how cute that was, but she said "Honey, I think you better look closer at that bird!" Now that she mentioned it, I could see that feathers were sort of coming off the sparrow. I got down the house and found the sparrow dead as a doornail, with his head stuck in the still too-small opening, and when I pulled him off the perch, his head fell off inside the birdhouse! Well, fortunately, when I opened up the house to retrieve the head, there was no female inside (that would have been too much like a bird version of Terrors of the Crypt). However, even though I cleaned up the house and re-hung it, no bird ever went near it. Could it have been haunted by a headless sparrow?