Gray

It was warmer than it looked or felt.  Pelicans were flying at breakfast, but I didn't see any again until evening.   The downy woodpeckers had to work for their suet but they didn't have to cope with so much competition.  Nuthatches still had to compete for sunflower seeds though.  Hoodies on the creek were hard to see in the low light. 

When I got home, there were more kinds of birds visiting.  A pine warbler wanted a drink and a share of the suet.  But the female downy pecked at it no matter from which direction it tried to approach.  White throats minded their own business.  So did juncos.

I pruned some upstart azalea twigs and on one a tiny spider scurried up its dragline.  A great blackbacked gull captured something too red to be natural.  A half dozen buzzards kept returning to circle over the creek as though they could see something floating that they couldn't reach.  I believe I also saw a hawk and an eagle while I was outside. 

Once I came back inside the songbirds came back, first warblers, then orioles.  A goldfinch stayed up in the cherry. 

It was really hard to see what was moving around on the lake - what I thought might be a turtle turned out to be a guano streak.  But I think I saw a woodduck pair and then some shovelers pinwheeling.  The odd muscovy duck was still flocking with the geese.  Something popped up at the water's edge just below me that I think was a female bufflehead.  Certainly there were a couple of drakes around. The water was mostly quiet but wind gusts sandpapered it.  The clouds broke apart before sunset and turned orange.