White sky

The morning was sunny but hazy.  The pair of downy woodpeckers came for breakfast.  I saw a kingfisher way downstream diving from a perch on a channel marker. A little before 10am, I was on the computer without the camera when a thump on the window made me turn.  Two pine warblers squabbled on the window sill.  And a flock of bluebirds zipped among the tree branches.  Juncos were in the grass and two blue jays chased each other.  Nuthatches seemed to be on every limb.  Very frustrating.

  I ran for the camera but the bluebirds were gone.  This pine warbler seemed curious for a moment.  Then I discovered a green spider on the window. 

When I went to lock the back door before leaving, I discovered the birds were around the feeders and birdbath.  A brown headed nuthatch had joined several red breasted nuthatches.  Goldfinches and bluebirds clustered around the birdbath.  A pine warbler found the suet.  So did a titmouse.  White throats stayed further away under the bushes.  And the camera battery needed to be changed in the midst of all this.

By noon the haze had become a layer of cirrostratus cloud.  Robins had joined the gathering and were tearing into the beautyberries.  I spied a sapsucker on a pine in a neighboring yard.  A grackle got a drink and sadly contemplated the feeder it was too heavy for.  A blue jay came back for more mealworms, then a Carolina wren.  A yellow rumped warbler showed up at the birdbath.  And finally, the oriole reappeared and discovered the grape jelly.  It too had some mealworms. 

As I was downloading all these photos, I glanced behind and caught a female kingfisher sitting on the dock bench whaling the mess out of a fish.  It looked like a baby flounder and it nearly choked her. During the afternoon the clouds thickened to the SW while the NE was almost blue.  But the cloud cover spread, leaving only a streak of open sky by the time of the cormorant commute.