With a cacophonous FOOM! a flock of mallards launches explosively from the reeds as I approach by kayak, quacking in terror as if sprayed with machine gun fire. After I’m safely past, the ducks flutter down, ruffle feathers, regroup.

An hour or so later while paddling back to the dock, I inadvertently stray too close to their hideaway and trigger another avian alarm.

FOOM! Off they go again, flapping frantically: Monster alert! Fly for your lives!

I paddle this route several days a week, and EVERY time the mallards panic, even though I never so much as veer in their direction or stop to chat: “Ahoy, feathered friends, how’s it going? Say, did you hear the one about the duck who goes into a bar, orders a beer … Bartender asks to be paid, and the duck replies, ‘Just put it on my bill!’ Ha-ha-ha! Oh well, time to move on. Later, guys … you have a wonderful day!”

I suppose ducks are better off treating me as if I were an angry Godzilla rather than an affable pal, considering that waterfowl hunting season starts in a week; the next human they encounter might greet them with a shotgun blast.

Cormorants, on the other hand, while equally bereft of a sense of humor, don’t cower in coves. They perch imperiously on pilings, wings outstretched in national emblem-like poses, and wait for hapless kayakers to meander within striking range.

I’ve learned to steer clear of these foul fowl because upon takeoff — flopping belly-first in the water and flapping like mad until gaining elevation — they let loose their offensive weapons. With B-52 precision, cormorants discharge a stream of sticky, smelly waste digested from their fishy diet: Look out below!

Turkey vultures, which I often see circling overhead, can employ a similar defense, though fortunately I’ve never been a victim. If threatened, they hurl projectile vomit. Considering that these scavengers subsist on rotting flesh, just imagine the stench.

Many wading birds, such as egrets, take a more passive approach to human intrusion.

Great blue herons, in particular, freeze as still as statues, as if nobody would notice a giant bird more than four feet tall, with a long, slender neck and dart-like beak. Keep moving, folks, nothing to see here …

Every so often, though, if you get too close for comfort, a heron spreads its six-foot wings and springs skyward.

Then, with an angry grawwk, it flies about 50 yards ahead, only to land directly back in the paddler’s path.

It pretends to be startled. You again! Sheesh. Grawwk!

“Hey!” a kayaker wants to shout, “Fly back the other way! What are you, stupid?”

That’s a rhetorical question. It’s a bird.

During decades of roaming hither and yon on land and sea, I’ve been chased or menaced by all manner of creatures — a charging grizzly bear in Alaska, stampeding yaks in Nepal, a defiant bull moose in Maine, a circling shark in Long Island Sound, even a crazed chicken that ran after me in North Stonington — but few as relentlessly as a nesting swan on the Mystic River. It flung itself repeatedly against my canoe until I finally had to swat it away with a paddle.

Nesting terns are even worse. One minute you’re happily strolling on a beach, the next a squadron of tiny birds dive-bombs your head savagely enough to draw blood.

Blue jays cry shrilly when they spot hikers; crows and ravens also squawk warnings whenever humans are afoot. To them, everybody is persona non grata.

Even the tiny sparrow that has made its home in a decommissioned kayak near our front door gets all huffy, cheeping furiously whenever we sit nearby on the deck.

“Look,” I consider replying. “This is our house, and we have every right to sit here and not be pestered. You, though, are an interloper, and if I weren’t such a nice guy, I would hit you with a blast from the garden hose. So pipe down!”

Amid so many winged whiners, though, some birds are as happy as larks to have human company.

Curious catbirds and phoebes flit nearby from branch to branch, cocking heads and flicking tails when people tramp underfoot. I’ve even watched a sociable red-shouldered hawk hop along the trail behind me for an hour while I gathered firewood.

Barred owls, too, are sometimes drawn to people — particularly if you hoot their distinctive who-cooks-for-you call.

Finally, some birds are above it all — literally and figuratively.

The other day, a broad shadow swept over the ground, and I peered skyward to see a bald eagle. Soaring majestically, it didn’t pay me the slightest attention and soon disappeared over the horizon.

Now THAT’S my kind of bird.