What's For Breakfast?

They are the smallest of

seeds. Set with care in a

tiny feeder suction-cupped

to my kitchen window.

How can this offering, a

mere handful of slender

grains, sustain the frenzied

Spring flirting of the finches

who flock there, shouldering

each other away from the

buffet, squawking at the

top of their minute lungs

MINE!    MINE!     MINE!

I suppose when you weigh

hardly more than the

collection of feathers that

give you flight, provisions

in weensy packets are a

requirement. How then to

explain their attraction to

a 300-pound bear?