The rain ended at breakfast but the day remained gray and turned misty in the early afternoon. There was little wind. Raindrops decorated bare branches like holiday lights. White throats were out foraging at breakfast. The female red bellied woodpecker decided to eat seeds today. So did titmice, chickadees, and cardinals. I spotted a yellow bellied sapsucker up in the hackberry. Its yellow belly was very clear but its head was partly hidden. A mockingbird played peek-a-boo in a dogwood.
After lunch, the pileated woodpeckers found the suet, first the female, then the male. When each landed it had its crest fully erect but quickly lowered the pompom into a point. A Carolina wren ate barkbutter crumbs. A gray squirrel leaped between trees. When the pileated woodpeckers were full, a downy got some suet. When I went to wash the towels, a little spider jumped off and hung from its safety line on the edge of the washing machine. I snagged the silk with a paint stirrer and suspended it over the sink. It looked like the spider I saw in the mountain mint last summer, the heptagonal orbweaver.
In the afternoon mist, the sapsucker was back eating hackberries. And then a flicker appeared making it all five local woodpecker species in one day. It was confusing with the mist and backlighting to know which I was looking at since they were both in the same tree eating hackberries. Neither was really designed to dangle from thin twigs. Meanwhile, out on the creek there were buffleheads and hoodies.
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