We’re seeing quite a few fledglings lately. Roman spotted the first one and asked me why the bird was fluttering like that. It was a sparrow; they are turning up more now that the two other balconies with feeders have stopped feeding. I think they were turned in; but they may be moving.  

 Anyway, the bird was a fledgling waiting to be fed. We’ve since seen the Cardinals come by, it seems to be a male and female baby that we’ve seen. I’m just guessing about that, though. One had more red than the other. The one I assume is female is the brownest cardinal I’ve ever seen. Given its crest and that the ones feeding it were cardinals, it’s clear that it’s a cardinal. I’m still convinced it’s a girl.

Speaking of babies, my niece Elizabeth was here over the Independence Day holiday, and she’s a bird lover too. No mean feat, either, since her immediate family doesn’t much like birds. In fact, her mother, my sister, actively dislikes them. She thinks they are “twitchy.” As if that’s a bad thing. I think that Libby and I are a little twitchy too; maybe that is why we like birds.

It was fun teaching her the names of the birds and telling her about who eats peanuts and who doesn’t. She was equally glad the pigeons weren’t congregating on the balcony. Today the flock I saw was pretty big, even though it seems they’re not getting fed from the other lower-floor balconies. They were actually circling — I am sure there’s a name for how they swoop about as a flock, but I don’t know it — and it was a pretty substantial flock.