Silly Bird! Silly Everyone?

Since arriving at Guadalupe River State Park,  a male cardinal has been pecking on the windows and sides of our Airstream trailer every morning for hours.  At first it was fun to see him fly right up and cling to the window sashing as we were sitting there eating breakfast, but soon it became annoying as he constantly flew at and pecked at the camper as hard as he could.  

This is apparently mating season and our little cardinal has decided to chase away all the rivals that he sees reflected in the glass and the aluminum skin of our trailer.  I suspect his girlfriend is about to trade him in for a REAL rival while this poor fellow knocks himself silly fighting imaginary competition.  Is this where the term “bird-brain” originated, I wonder?

The more I reflect on his actions though, the more similarities I see between his futile pecking and some of the equally futile behaviors we all occasionally demonstrate.  Who hasn’t felt they were just banging their head against a wall on the job, in school, or in our personal life?  Sometimes there is a very fine line between futile effort and heroic effort, between determination and stupidity, between knowing when to persevere and when to quit.