A friend of the feathered

Noaki Schwartz

Every morning Kiki Allan steps out onto the deck of her boat. Holding a

fistful of bread, she waits patiently.

She doesn’t have to wait long.

For out of nowhere floats a lone, black-headed swan. Following him are an

army of ducks, sea gulls, a few pigeons and even the occasional heron.

“Come on Sir Swany,” she said with a maternal sweetness, adding that the

regal Japanese swan was a recent discovery.

Allan is not quite sure where he came from. When she first noticed him

she called around to several zoos and bird sanctuaries wondering whether

they had lost a prized pet. He has no mate, which concerns Allan, since

birds partner for life. She was especially worried sometime ago, she

said, when she noticed that he was gliding over the water with one foot

tucked under him -- until after a bit of research Allan found that the

bird was simply drying off his foot.

She frets over the birds in the bay like a mother hen, noticing if one

doesn’t show up, lags behind or hasn’t been eating.

She’s always loved animals, she said, since she was a girl in New Jersey

feeding the birds at the lake with her aunts. So when she docked her boat

in Newport waters nearly 10 years ago, it seemed only natural that she

would start looking after the birds.

While she has a great floppy dog that pads around the boat, ready to snap

up any missed bread, Allan has never owned a bird as a pet. The thought

of caging something that should be free seems to make her uncomfortable.

She likes the birds to swim freely in the same way that she can roam over

the water in her boat.

Allan watches the birds daily, always ready to give them a little edge

over what natural difficulties might befall them. When the ducklings

began hatching earlier this year, there were countless little birds

swimming through the reeds. One by one, though, they were snapped up by

raccoons and other nighttime predators, until there was only one

surviving family of ducks left.

And then, Allan noticed that one little duck was lagging behind the

others. Each day the slower bird struggled to keep up, didn’t get as much

to eat and began to grow weaker. Finally Allan swept the duckling up in a

net and removed a mussel that had clamped on to his foot and was weighing

the little bird down.

The birds seem to recognize her kind face as well. Earlier this year she

befriend a green heron that would eventually fly out at Allan’s call.

While she fed the ducks, “Brownie,” would snap up the fish that the bread

attracted. He took off a few weeks ago when the weather started to cool,

but Allan hopes to see him again next year.

While she can feed the birds and take care of the occasional problem,

Allan realizes that she can’t protect the birds from everything or

everyone. She was particularly upset recently when she found that a group

of kids was throwing rocks at the birds that swam eagerly up to them for

food. Their actions were foreign to a woman who relates more easily to

the simple honesty of animals.

“Maybe that’s why I take care of the birds,” she said. “I don’t have any

children.”