Humid

Sunrise was a dramatic pink because the clouds were thicker than yesterday.  The sun still penetrated and brightened the day.  I startled two doves when I went out to photograph the sunrise.  A great blue heron and several cormorants flew through the pink sky.  A slug left a trail from bottom to top of the French door window.

Chickadees kept the feeder busy at breakfast.  A downy woodpecker visited the suet and a white throated sparrow ran across the patio.  Later a Carolina wren came for mealworms, but all this was dimmed by the fogged-up windows.  I spied a mockingbird through a gap in the moisture.

In the late morning I was watching a squirrel clean up under the feeder when it suddenly dashed under a chair where it stood quivering.  I looked everywhere but couldn't see the red tailed hawk till it swooped across the yard with two crows in hot pursuit.  As soon as it was gone birds literally tumbled out of the bushes.  Two male cardinals popped out of the azalea at the far end of the pool. Downy woodpeckers and chickadees came back to the feeders while song and white throated sparrows foraged below.  A Carolina wren joined the squirrel at the mealworms.  And a mockingbird flew from bush to bush, I don't know why.

Hooded mergansers and the first bufflehead I've seen this fall paddled on the creek.  Meanwhile, the clouds thickened, turning the sky white, and the day grew dull.  Later, as we ate dinner, a blue jay flitted through the bushes.  Cormorants and egrets followed a school of fish downstream.  By sundown, the overcast shaded imperceptibly into night.