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Little Birds
Daily Meditation 791–4/29/2024
I love feeding the birds and squirrels. It’s a major high point of every day for me. Each morning around 7 or so, I pour two scoops of mixed seeds into my antique, tin bucket and make my way out to the front of the house. Most mornings, I’m mindlessly whistling some song — today, it was “Cool, Cool Mountain” from Mario 64 (lol).
The birds and squirrels sort of know that’s the call, as within about 10 minutes of coming back indoors, the feeders and front yard are swamped with chickadees, finches, bluejays, cowbirds, grackles, starlings, chipmunks and, of course, the squirrels. Deer even mosey over sometimes. This morning, we (somehow?) had two mallards in our yard — for the record, the nearest pond or lake is about 12 blocks away, so not certain how the heck that happened.
Anyway, birds are pretty nasty to one another, generally. Those tiny finches you hear warbling and tweeting? They may as well be Brooklyn cab drivers from your favorite 90s movies, cursing and threatening one another.
Today, alone, on one of my thistle socks hanging outside, there were about 4 or so yellow finches. Mind you, they’re not much bigger than a man’s thumb. But, here this lot was, clinging onto the sides of the sock, furiously flapping their tiny wings, screeching, and pecking wildly at one another with puny beaks. In the kerfuffle, no…
