Sunshine!

There was a bit of mist over the placid water at sunrise.  The yellow rump was the first bird to breakfast.  White throats soon came to forage on the ground and a Carolina wren landed on the seed feeder.  Then the regulars arrived with titmice and a downy.  A couple of starlings made a short visit to the suet but seemed unsatisfied.  The creek had gone rough by 9:30 but it smoothed out later.  The female downy hammered some more on the neighbor's gazebo. 

It was a perfect day to sit on the dock now that it's safe.  The blue sky wouldn't even develop contrails.  A pelican landed on the boathouse roof just as I came down the hill.  Then I discovered an egret fishing along the bank.  A heron perched on a navigation sign.  Two drakes pursued a screaming female mallard.  I could hear towhees whistling and finally spotted one. 

At lunch a pine warbler appeared briefly.  Doves and juncos were all over.  Crows never stopped making noise and in the distance behind a screen of branches they harassed a hawk.  Buffleheads and geese paddled around once I'd left the dock.

I went back out in the late afternoon and caught a pelican fly-by before the bird landed on a navigation sign.  A kingfisher shot past me when my back was turned.  Something made a large V in the water pointed right at me, and then stopped.  Nothing surfaced anywhere so I figure it must have been a fish.  Herons, egrets, and cormorants commuted.  Some ducks flew past, probably mallards but I'm not sure.  A red tailed hawk landed atop a pine in front of the water tower and was dive-bombed by a crow.  Wisps of cumulus like torn fleece formed in the North and passed over to the SE.  I did not stay for sunset because my toes were froze.