Inspectors of my mother's collection never noticed that the little appendage was prosthetic. Of all my mother's birds, the mended ruby-throat comes easiest to mind. My youngest brother, Tad, who resides in Minnesota, has it now. That is fine. For much, if not most, of the year, few birds of color are around to be enjoyed where my brother lives.
Sparrows dominate the winters, and starlings.
The jay's blue seems not to count because the bird is so meddlesome and bullying. One is left to hope that a redheaded woodpecker will visit the suet bag, that a cardinal will brighten the feeder of sunflower seeds, that a flight of cedar waxwings will strip the holly tree in the back yard of its fruit. I'd sent him - Confederates in the Attic , on tape. While a Yankee, he was thrilled with the gift and his speech was as animated as I had heard it in a too-long while. I passed the phone to my son, who passed it to my wife and then, just beyond the window of the kitchen where the three of us were huddled, a hummingbird visited a hibiscus bloom.