Bird Brain

    One of my first thoughts of the economic crisis 3 years ago, after a little freak-out over our current personal, astronomical debt, was of birds.  Would folks still be able to feed wild birds at their feeders? Would I be able to afford wild bird seed?  I currently supply 2 feeders, one of  songbird seed and one of tiny thistle seed. Whenever I fill up the feeders, I obnoxiously sing, "Feed the birds, tuppence a bag."  Now I try not to think, "Feed the birds, $11 a bag." And that is only the songbird bag.  Thistle seed is $18 for a smallish bag!
  I am enamored with lesser goldfinches whose little bills tweeze out these thistle seeds. There is no way I cannot fill up their feeder. They empty their tube of seeds in 2 days while my other songbird feeder is devoured in just 6 hours.  I watch mourning doves, house finches, towhees, house sparrows, scrub jays and a returning spring couple, black-headed grosbeaks. I am thrilled by all these visitors. I eagerly count them, and in the winter I tally them for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. 
  This doesn't seem like a wide winged variety but they attract countless feathered friends.  This spring we had 2 nests of wrens, a nest of house finches and a nest of ravens.  We also had prized western bluebirds, a rash of cedar waxwings, and an opportunistic Cooper's hawk. Mockingbirds sing stolen songs in the middle of a summer night, and a black phoebe swoops daily over our pool. Bands of bushtits flit in bouncing clumps through our yard, and 2 ladder-backed woodpeckers trill on the fly from tree to tree. Each evening mysterious owls shriek and hoot. 
  Each dawn our yardmates serenade us. My gratitude for their presence and their melodies is seed. Please alight and sing for us!  Please lay your perfect blue eggs here! Please flourish! 
  $11 or $18 a bag? Pshaw! What a bargain! What a necessity! 

               There's a comfortable squirrel splayed out in the heat above the feeder.