I had a juvenile towhee a few years back with no tail feathers in my
yard. It took me a little while to figure out what it was since part
of their character is that tail twitching around while they're kicking
leaves and such out of the way.

I figured it had been a close call with a predator of some kind, be it
cat or hawk.

Craig Kerns
Lake Forest Park, WA
Backyard birding pictures at http://www.eskimo.com/~cekerns/birds

On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 16:44:16 -0700, you wrote:

>I have five chickadees visiting the sunflower seed feeder. One of
>them has no tail whatsoever.