I have noticed something recently — birds seem to be eating flowers. Not just the nectar, or the pollen, or the fruit, but the actual petals. I don’t know if I never noticed this before, or if the behavior is due to the extremely dry winter that we’ve had.

The first bird with a flower petal in its beak was this crow, last year. It had flown 20 feet from a flowering shrub to the peak of our house, and then on to parts unknown. I assumed it was doing something else with it — carrying it to its mate? That’s hugely anthropomorphic, but crows do make offerings to other crows, when courting, so maybe?

Then this spring, I saw lesser goldfinches eating from catkins, which are the dangling bundles of willow flowers. But I could put this off to the fact that the flowers do have a lot of pollen just before they open, and pollen is packed with nutrients, protein and calories, and that’s what they were after.

That’s certainly what this squirrel was after.

Then I caught sight of this male House Finch flitting around from branch to branch in a crab apple tree. I didn’t know what it was doing until I was able to zoom in and see that it had a flower petal in its beak. I have several photos of it with petals, but none with other flower or tree parts in its beak.

It was very deliberately rummaging around in the flowers themselves.

Eventually, it flew off with the flower petal in its beak. Unlike crows or ravens, don’t make presents of objects to other birds, I don’t think. So I am left with the possibility that he was eating the petals. And that just seems unusual.