Persephone Period

According to the VA Pilot's gardening column, "Horticulture has the term “Persephone Period”: the time of year when days have less than 10 hours of sunlight...With fewer than 10 hours of light, crop growth more or less stops." And that was today, which I confirmed by checking sunrise and sunset times.  The Solomon's seal was fading toward dormancy. 

Anyway, I went a bit overboard with the camera.  The creek was rumpled, making reflections into abstracts.  A pine warbler woke up early to get a share of suet.  Chickadees, titmice, and house finches competed for seeds and a titmouse occasionally settled for a barkbutter ball.  

I took quite a few pictures of the feeder perch trying to catch one of the speedy brown-headed nuthatches.  Yellow rumped warblers showed up for lunch but the pine warbler stuck to the suet.  Downy woodpeckers needed a lot of suet too.  

Turtles basked in the chilly sunshine.  And I saw the first hooded mergansers of the season!  The pied-bill grebe returned later in the afternoon.  And of course there were mallards. 

In the middle of the afternoon crows gathered, cursing and screaming.  I looked where they were looking but the vegetation was too dense.  Finally they drove the hawk out into the open.  Its red tail was obvious and besides, it was BIG.  When it exploded into flight, I missed it.