I love birds. Always have and probably always will, so it's a given that I find Zuni bird fetishes terribly hard to resist. And I especially admire Edison's creative use of stones for the inlay on the various birds he makes. His little hummers are among my favorites and we must have a handful of his parrots in our collection.

This little redwinged blackbird is carved of jet. Edison has etched the various feather patterns on the compact body and then inlaid apple coral for the wing patches. He's very sweet (despite what I said about male redwing blackbirds in the following passage. FIFTEEN wives? Geez.)

The male Red-winged Blackbird fiercely defends his territory during the breeding season. He may spend more than a quarter of all the daylight hours in territory defense. He vigorously keeps all other males out of the territory and defends the nests from predators. He will attack much larger animals, including horses and people. A highly polygynous species, one male may have up to 15 different females making nests in his territory. In some populations 90% of territorial males have more than one female. But, from one quarter to up to half of the young in "his" nests do not belong to the territorial male!