Robins

There was a light frost and a skin of ice on the creek at first, but the sun quickly warmed everything.  A little flock of robins landed to drink from the pool puddle.  I was not surprised they were thirsty because there's been no rain this month and very little in January.  A different flock squabbled in the back yard across the creek.  It looked to me like one vulture had something that the others wanted.  They spread out their wings and danced around like boxers.  I saw one with a black head and several with red heads.  An eagle swooped past and kept going.  

At the feeders we had a red belly, a blue jay, a Carolina wren, a mockingbird, a bluebird, a pair of orioles, a pine and a myrtle warbler.  On the ground, the song sparrow joined the white throats.  A crow promenaded past the door.   The blue jay scolded me for letting the barkbutter balls run low.  

A brown headed nuthatch showed up for lunch.  Most of the breakfast birds returned.  I also saw through the trees an egret and a pelican and a duck I couldn't identify.   That made me decide to do a third bird count from a window with a better view of the creek.  I was rewarded with a bufflehead, a pair of hooded mergansers, and a red breasted merganser.  Pelicans were easier to photograph and I could identify the gulls.  One was a ringed bill and another was a great black backed gull.  At least four cormorants were fishing or drying out.  

I finally succeeded in accessing eBird on the laptop and using Merlin on the phone.