The morning began with a faceoff between a blue jay and a cardinal, but the cardinal was a female so the national colors were not displayed. They chose separate breakfasts. Mallards invaded the pool but the dog did not seem to notice.The ducks didn't wait to be discovered. They left quite a few feathers in the water. The male was molting out of eclipse. Hummers continued to bicker over their feeder. That didn't stop a titmouse from finding it a convenient perch.
Two skinks zipped along the retaining wall, one in hot pursuit of the other. A great blue heron supervised the mallards on the dock. A pine warbler visited the barkbutter ball dish, followed by a Carolina wren. The fledgling cardinal was foraging again under the feeder while the adults fussed over precedence.
I took credit for the rain because it came while I was watering. There were lulls when the birds returned, even the hummers. During one lull, I went out to shut off the water I'd been adding to the pool, and I got caught by the next band or rain. Two male cardinals wanted sunflower seeds but I didn't see any argument.
A downy woodpecker popped in to see if the fall menu was out yet. Brown headed nuthatches snatched seeds from under the cardinal's beak. The sky slowly cleared by evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment