Gray gloom

Even when it wasn't raining, the air was misty.  The mockingbird blended right in.  The downy woodpeckers had a lot of competition for suet.  Female orioles moved right in on a downy.  Pine and yellow rumped warblers went back and forth between the suet and the barkbutter balls.  I saw one yellow rump with a mask and one without, and pine warblers in all gradations of yellow. 

A white breasted nuthatch made off with a barkbutter ball.  So did blue jays and Carolina wrens.  The feral cat stayed a long time, just sitting on the pool cover watching.  A mockingbird visited the other suet cage by the Northwest corner of the house. 

A bufflehead drake hung around our section of the creek for over an hour.  He wasn't fishing or preening, just loitering.  Maybe he was sleeping?  Later a girlfriend showed up and the pair paddled around more of the creek.  Two larger ducks paddled away from me and one looked like it had a shoveler's bill.  If so, they were non-breeding males.  A great blue heron flew upstream. 

At lunch, the ruby crowned kinglet came to the feeders.  It got very frustrated trying to get a turn at the suet.  I got frustrated because it kept turning its back to me.  Because birds like to drink from it, we never took down the ant moat when we switched from the hummingbird feeder to the suet cage.  It also serves as an ad hoc rain gauge and today it reached overflow.  A couple of the larger birds got drenched when they hit the suet too hard.  Bluebirds must have weighed less because they were not more careful.  A female red bellied woodpecker landed on the post, but gave up before getting any suet. 

Several white throated sparrows and the song sparrow foraged in the wet mulch.  A brown headed nuthatch made several trips to the seed feeder, dodging a possessive house finch.  Titmice and chickadees also kept the feeder occupied.  A flock of blackbirds flew over several times and one red-winged blackbird landed on the post.  A female cardinal was visible in the bushes.  I think a flicker was sitting in the pine tree but is was silhouetted against the sky and behind vegetation, so it might have been a red bellied woodpecker.