Blog

FLUTTERVILLE.

That’s what we have named our front porch this year, all 30 feet of it. Along its length are 4 bird feeders, proof positive that we have learned nothing from prior visits by neighborhood bears. We live in the woods, so speciation is limited (red-bellied woodpeckers, nuthatches, chickadees, cardinals, house finches, goldfinches and tufted titmice–with doves on the ground below, of course). What we lack in speciation we fully recover in numbers! Kay estimates at least one hundred birds arise in a massive fluttermania whenever we open the door, reminding me vaguely of Miami International. A neighbor once labeled our birds ‘welfare’ birds, with which I wholly disagree. There is nothing about our birds that is lazy or indolent, just wildly capitalizing, like good American birds out to be. For that matter I am fully in favor of a guaranteed annual birdseed allotment for all birds that choose our porch, sick or well, old or young. So there, I have exposed my politics in full. A radical bird-feeding, bird-loving person if there ever was one. In turn, the birds clearly love us deeply, which I consider utterly fluttering. ~B