for the birds

Last week I invested $3 in this bell-shaped chunk of bird seed and tied it to the fire escape with a rubber band. I wanted to feed my little friend, this black phoebe who comes every day and catches insects but, of course, that bird really only eats...insects. It took the other birds two days to find the seed bell, and now there are lots of them, including this Western Scrub-Jay. It is so big that Juan calls it "the blue chicken."



My father would die if he saw this crappy photo, since he does real bird photography. I shot this through the window screen so it is like manually pixelating it.