Lots of birds

Leaves were wet.  Another hummer showed up, silhouetted against the sky, before I got the fresh feeder hung.  A pair of goldfinches visited briefly.  The male was just beginning to have a shadow where his black cap will be. 

Then the pileated woodpecker appeared.   It's strange that she seems to prefer the suet cage nearly empty. 

Pollen made streaks on the water.  I spotted a kingfisher way upstream and an egret downstream.  A cardinal gleaned nest material at the edge of the water.  A little chipping sparrow came hopping across the patio, then flew before I was ready.  

A dark butterfly, maybe two, and one or more cabbage whites flitted around.  Bumblebees congregated around the redbud flowers.  Gnats congregated above me for their mating dance. 

I rearranged feeders but blue jays and red bellied woodpeckers had no difficulty finding what they wanted.  A brown headed nuthatch visited several times and I missed every time.  A white throated sparrow hunted through the grass.  A brown thrasher sat on a dogwood limb and inflated itself, then began to preen. 

Hazy

The sky between wispy clouds was a faded blue.  I felt kind of hazy, myself, and out of sync with the time change.  The haze produced a sundog at the tip of a contrail.


I heard a distant train whistle, a barking dog, but few birds.  Some gnats or other tiny flies were in the air but I didn't see anything larger.

Warmer

Cloud cover came and went, but the sky was gray more often than blue.  There was more detritus in the water which had dropped from 80° on Thursday to 75° today. Nevertheless, I stayed in long enough to clean it up and to rescue a small beetle and a couple of small moths.  And to avoid a spider scuttling on the surface tension.  The only other invertebrates were a lacewing in flight and gnats dancing in a cloud.

Birds were more plentiful.  A blue jay kept an eye on me.  After hearing a woodpecker for a while I finely saw that it was a pileated.  A mockingbird came for the beauty berries.  Robins flocked in the trees. 

A Northern Parula Warbler appeared in the domestic cherry tree.  An egret flew downstream.  Titmice were camera shy.