verdin

A beautiful little bird, the Verdin, has delighted me for years as I watch it flit through Palo Verde trees singing and feeding on insects. The other day one flew into a window and was not able to live through the injuries. So sad - my heart hurts when I see creatures suffering. I thought that the red mark on the bird's shoulder was blood from the accident, but I discovered that this is part of the bird's coloration... something I was not able to see from afar.

Verdin Breeding Male: Very small songbird with gray upperparts and pale gray underparts. Face and throat are dull yellow; eye-lines are dark.
Wings are gray with red-brown shoulder patches. Black bill, legs and feet. It builds complex sphere-shaped nests using as many as two thousands small twigs.

After the sweet creature died, I placed it by
the St. Francis statue in my garden
to allow it to become
a part
of the cycle of life, here,
in the desert...
foxes, cats, and coyotes,
all wander through my garden...

it usually only takes a day
for the animal to become food for another animal.