bird nursery

Up in the corner of our porch is this little nursery. We would like to have documented it further, but we are going out of town for three weeks, and the little ones may have flown the coup by that time.

We are not authentic birdwatchers, and consequently we have no idea what is the Latin title of the varieties we have seen at our feeder, and now see right on our porch. But we do care enough to mount a bird feeder, and in the front yard, a hummingbird feeder. Yes, we CAN tell them apart from the others.


We think the birds are cute, and we enjoy watching them, but neither Barbara or I seem to be committed to the necessary book research, and we don't speak Latin.

So here is what we caught with the camera. Maybe an ornithological type person would like to tell me if this is a finch a wren or what.

We have enjoyed our bird feeder, and the crowd of feathered friends that chirp and flutter around it like a flash mob.  We look for wild birdseed on sale, but even that gets expensive in the long run.  The feeder sports 6 holes, each with a perch, and then a wider circle at the bottom to catch the spill.  It doesn't.  When I fill it and retreat my distance, the bolder ones cautiously perch and begin to chow down.  Then others come and begin the game, chasing one another away to the fence while they nibble a little.  Whoever first said, "She eats like a bird." cannot have meant it as a compliment.  Some varieties eat half their body weight in one day.  (Okay, that statistic maybe bogus, but I think I read something similar to that.)

From the seeds that spill, some germinate amid the rocks below.  Last year I let them mature to see what they were.  But grain bearing weeds just cluttered the landscape.  This year I already tore out a crop.  The weird thing is that the snails seem to like this stuff.  Is that possible?  Anyway I have had my way with those snails.  I wish some varieties of birds would eat them.