Bird Envy

My father has a veritable "food court" of about a dozen bird feeders in his backyard in Indiana, and the avian patrons drop in nonstop throughout the day. I sat on the back porch and snapped photos during our visit. (All photos by MizM, who should probably consider using a tripod someday.) As for my own birdless feeders, they were bereft of birds and seed when I got home. I filled them all and added a suet-y kind of feeder during the weekend, but we're getting into the tremendously windy summer season, when it's all the little guys can do to fly rightside-up, and anything smaller than a jay needs to be tethered to the feeder to eat.

Here are a few of the guys I spotted on dad's feeders... Feel free to correct my identifications if I'm wrong. They are, in this order: a downy woodpecker, house finches (including one in flight), a cardinal, a nuthatch of some kind, and tufted titmice (titmouses?).









By the way, a new study says that 12% of the world's bird species are likely to be extinct by the end of this century.