All quiet ...

As many of you know, I'm a bit sad that summer is soon over. 

Perhaps it is not so much that summer is coming to an end, but that all my feathered friends' actions in my backyard are winding down.  The cardinals, blue jays, starlings, finches, grackles, robins, chickadees, cowbirds, woodpeckers, doves, sparrows, titmouses and those sweet sweet little hummingbirds.  All is quiet.

For over five months, I've watched them court and romance one another, mate, nest, and hatch their young.   I found fledglings that fledged too soon.  Observed a sparrow raising a cowbird and got a hummingbird to sit on my hand.  I saw too many house finches with the fatal eye disease and lost a couple of doves to a hungry hawk. 

And then there were all those fledging teens with their insatiable appetites.  Most are all gone.  But there is still one hanging around.  A little house finch.  A definite late-in-season-hatching. 

He caught my attention last week with all his ruckus at his mother who was feeding at my feeder.  That's him below.

He carried on something awful.

 He was rather cute, with his little tufts of baby feathers that still clung to his head.

When he couldn't get her attention, he flew down landing awkwardly on the feeder and begged her from there.  He was so obnoxious she finally flew away!

Minutes later, they both returned, mother first and then the little one.  Still chirping away at her!

Doesn't she look weary!  I wish I knew bird talk ....

She left him behind again and went back to the feeder.  (Doesn't he look like a little devil here?!)
All I can imagine was that she must be trying to illustrate to him how to feed from the feeder.  But he just didn't seem to be getting the message.

Well, she must have been successful, because here is yesterday.  Still sporting that little tuft of feather but now alone and feeding.  Quite well, I would say, by the size of him.  No more chirping and squawking going on.  And no signs of his mother.  He's on his own.

Sort of sad when your babies leave.

I miss them.  Even more than summer.