Cold

This was a good day for #GBBC bird counting -- cold, sunny, and not much wind.  I started right in at breakfast with a butterbutt.  A junco, a couple of blue jays, a pair of cardinals, and another of house finches showed up the first hour.  Then white throated sparrows, doves, bluebirds, a Carolina wren and a brown headed nuthatch all wanted food.  

A red bellied woodpecker tried to out-glare starlings over the suet, but gave up.  A song sparrow foraged around the birdbath but a brown thrasher only wanted a drink from the puddle on the pool cover.  On the creek I saw a mallard and a cormorant, and flying over a gull. 

We had lunch late but the birds kept coming.  The temperature had gone up ten degrees but it was still nippy.  The bluebirds, house finches, sparrows, juncos, blue jays, doves, woodpeckers, wrens, and warblers were still around  A mockingbird and a titmouse joined in.  The brown headed nuthatch tried again for seeds but had to forage in the mulch.  What a come-down.   A female oriole stayed up in a tree. 

I spotted a hoodie pair on the creek.  Pelicans and cormorants fished.  I glimpsed an egret below the dam.  A robin hopped around briefly.  A crow harassed some bird I couldn't see.  House finches found something in an azalea.They make a commotion of thrashing branches. A sleepy squirrel soaked up sun nearby.