You’ve probably noticed them: birds flying around in malls, or airports, or “big box” stores, like Home Depot or Walmart.

Here’s an interesting article about this phenomenon in the Baltimore Sun (registration required).

Turns out these stores are idea habitat. No predators. Plenty of niches for nesting. Spilt grass or bird seed makes for easy forage, and for water there’s always a puddle around (or, I suppose, a working model of one of the ubiquitous fountains these stores sell for peoples’ gardens).

The stores’ doors don’t post a problem — the birds just figure out how to get through when we humans open them: they “hover near store entrances waiting for shoppers to trip the [motion detection] sensors.”

Most of the birds I’ve seen are English sparrows, but other birds that commonly make their homes in these stores are starlings, pigeons, house finches and mourning doves. And then there are the unusual ones. The article mentions occasional sightings of crows and owls, and a red-tailed hawk that “took up residence inside a North Carolina Home Depot store” and became a regional phenom — people would come to the store just to see it.

Not everyone is thrilled about them. Food stores can’t tolerate them (the droppings pose a potential health hazard) and some people just aren’t . . . nature types.

Phil Miller of Perry Hall is a sales representative for a company that makes lighting products carried by Home Depot. His job takes him to hundreds of locations.

“It’s a pain in the neck,” he says of store birds, which leave droppings on high-stacked inventory boxes that he has to move around. Miller was recently in a Delaware Home Depot that had caught the fancy of a mockingbird, a breed notorious for its mimicking ability.

“That thing was going for hours and hours,” he says. “You couldn’t even hear the radio. It made every sound possible.”

Sorry, but my sympathy is with the bird ;-)