Birds have one thing on their minds: food

Perhaps the essential thing to remember with all the birds flying past your windows, nestled in all those boughs and branches, is this: Unlike spring, when sexual tension fills the air, there's not a reproductive yearning out there.

It's all about one thing right now: chow, chow, chow.

Many of the feathered flocks hunkering down and staying for winter — cardinals, chickadees, some woodpeckers, nuthatches and house finches, for starters — are packing on fat and trying to make it through the winter. .

(By Barbara Mahany, Chicago Tribune)