It always strikes me how very different each bird is. We know different species have different habits, but until you work closely with birds, you may not realize how personalities vary from bird to bird.

It seems the messiest birds are the robins and grackles in spring and summer. At Wild Bird Rehab, we try to guess how long it will take some grackles to destroy thier cage set up. One grackle carefully takes food from a dish, walks across the cage to the water dish, dips the food and eats. After three or four bites of food, the bird starts tearing strips of newspaper to dip. Then, the bird grabs the dish by the edge and flips it. No matter the size of the bowl or whether we put rocks in it - over it goes. Then all the birds in the cage join in tearin up newspaper and paper towels until the cage is a complete disaster.

Robins are also good at this game. Occasionally, we'll have a robin with definite nesting instincts. Strips of paper are carefully torn, rejecting some, keeping others. The approved strips of paper are carefully stuffed under the sitting birds in an attempt to build a nest. The particular robin might not get further than five or six strips, but works at moving those strips around and getting them just so. Meanwhile the others in the cage were bust eating pokeberries and tossing a few on the floor. In pokeberry season, our floors are covered in purple.

I recall a real brat robin. Sitting on the perch next to his cage mate, he would casually reach over, peck his head or grab a feather. Though they did occasionally get in a fight, he was usually just irritating his cage mate. It reminded me of two siblings - one picking at the other until he can't take it anymore.

The blue jays, of course, are so smart and always into something. If it's not bugging each other, it's hiding food and seed in all the crevasses they can find - always a joy to clean those cages!

The older birds show thier personality in other ways. While we feed appropriate food for each species, we find that some birds definitely have thier favorites! If you say flickers dont usually like oranges, the next one will devour orange slices. One young heron would only eat goldfish, the next minnows. The doves and pigeons get a basic seed mix: one will leave all the sunflower and thistle, another, the corn and a third, the millet.

When birds are moved to the outside aviary, some go straight to a perch and settle in. Others try to escape and bounce from screen to screen. One bird will eat whenever there is food; another of the same species will not eat unless the dishes are placed in a high position or a low position.

Some mourning doves are sweet-natured calm birds that quietly grow and heal. Some are wild and give an opportunity, these "wild ones" escape thier cages and charge toward any window or ceiling light. These birds always have scrapes on the edges of thier wings and the top of thier heads.

I love the diversity of birds that come into Wild Bird Rehab. We see more than 90 species a year. But seeing the individual personalities emerge adds even more fun. After a long day caring for birds, I sometimes find myself just sitting and watching a cage of birds across the room. Birds never cease to amaze me.