Many birds, 8 species

This morning, I was reading a chapter of a wonderful book titled Celebration of Discipline. The chapter was about silence, and the need to "let our words be few." So I know I shouldn't be writing this post, because it's precisely the kind of "speaking" and reacting that the spiritual discipline of silence warns against. But I'm going to do it anyway. I know, very sad... I guess blogging goes against a lot of these disciplines to begin with. Sigh...

I received an anonymous comment in my Montreal Mosaicultures post today half-amusedly demonstrating that I'm very bad at counting. I know where this well-meaning person is coming from because I also have the annoying habit of correcting people, often publicly (like in Facebook!) -- I know it's bad and it's pretty irresistible, but I hope to work on that in the future. Especially after having experienced first-hand the effects of "know-it-all-ism." I suffer from that disease too (that's why I'm writing this post). Sigh...

In any case, thanks for taking the time to count the birds at the magnificent Tree of Birds (see a couple* more incredible photos here).
* a couple of photos the tree, there are more than two photos in that article, of course

When I wrote about 8 birds in my post I meant eight species of birds, which is what I learned from this sign describing them (I only photographed the English descriptions, but I'm pretty sure there were just eight species of birds). I tried googling to find more info, but my search didn't yield much, so I resort to my own photographs.

4 one one side:

And , and 4 more on the other side of the sign:

A close up on the Brazilian and the Trinidadian birds:

Another Brazilian bird:

 And the last Brazilian one:

They portrayed several birds of each species in the tree, not just one of each. I found the stories to be very moving and I thought that it will be sad when these birds, like so many other species of animals in the planet, become extinct. :(