Increasing clouds

The sky is smudged with cloud cover though the sun is strong.  It is supposed to warm all day and then rain.  Squirrels are up along with white throated sparrows and cardinals.  The heron is back but this morning it's down below the bulkhead. A pair of Carolina wrens are poking their beaks into everything  - they are the monkeys of the songbird world.  The narcissus that look like fried eggs have started to bloom. 

The nuthatches are hungry.  One snuck onto the feeder as soon as I turned my back from sweeping out the birdbath.  I heard a soft tsuk-tsuk behind me.  On Cornell's recordings, it's the final one, the sound of two nuthatches conversing, that I heard.  A female junco also visited the feeder. 

The birdbath is too close to the feeder, but I think it would fill up anyway from the mulch kicking that goes on.  I wanted to clean it out before the predicted rain made all the hulls soggy.  And I added water because yesterday the squirrels were looking into the watering can.  I don't know if that was curiosity or thirst, but I decided not to wait for the rain.

A bluebird appeared on the West side of the house, which can only be seen from the bathroom windows.  I had to shoot through window screen.  The net behind the bird is where our neighbor trains vines to give him shade at his grill. 

The cloud cover thickened in the afternoon and the wind got chilly.  Chickadees, nuthatches, and wrens continued to feed.  I saw and heard an osprey but only heard a kingfisher.  I planted some seeds in anticipation of rain, but was too cold to continue.  Squirrels both fed and acted out dominance.  One twitched every time the other looked up.  Then the anxious one, a female, went up the pole and tried to get into the feeder.  Failing, it washed its face, then peed on the roof of the feeder.

Rain began before sundown.