Chilly

A great blue heron waded under the bulkhead while we ate breakfast.  The yellow rumped warbler watched over its suet from the bench back.  Cormorants pursued a school of fish upstream several times during the day.  Pelicans flew over the diving cormorants. Then they all straggled back downstream.  Maybe the fish did too because I saw one jump in the wake of a returning cormorant.  

I finally remembered to bring out another bag of barkbutter balls.  A blue jay shoved a bluebird off the feeder.  A red bellied woodpecker waited in the dogwood for a break in the traffic.  

The vine I bought two Springs ago has been blooming.  Its flowers are similar to the Carolina jessamine which has also been blooming.  I discovered that the bulbs I tried to give away last Fall had sprouted so I planted some.  One intrepid turtle soaked up sunshine despite the chill.  

According to the gardening column in the newspaper, this winter has been slightly warmer than average, but less sunny and a lot wetter.  The article counts December with January and February which the calendar year statistics obscure. 

Big birds

The masked butterbutt got up early to have some suet before the boss warbler arrived.  But the next visitor was the male red bellied woodpecker.  Then the bluebirds came, and then the downy woodpeckers.  I spotted a robin up in the hackberry.  Five blackbirds arrived to despoil the suet, one starling and four cowbirds, I think. 

At lunch, the local brown thrasher was showing a guest around.  I hope that will mean baby birds in a couple of months.  (There may have been two of them around all along, but this was the first time I saw more than one, and there is no obvious difference between male and female.)  The afternoon wasn't as windy but it felt mighty cold.  The sky was cloudless and the creek surface had smoothed out.  I found a blooming daffodil and a Spring camellia blossom.  

A flock of cormorants fished all day.  Crows harassed the eagles' child.  A feamle hoodie I never noticed showed up in a photo.  Several pelicans cruised over the creek in the morning, but the young, brown pelican was alone while I was on the dock.  Well, alone except for the cormorants that kept popping up all around it.  A couple of buzzards circled over the scene.  And just ad the pelican finally caught a fish, my battery died. 

Raptors!

A Cooper's hawk and a teenage eagle, to say nothing of the feral cat.  But first, there were hungry blue jays and bluebirds.  The male red bellied woodpecker wanted suet but the female preferred barkbutter balls.  So did the brown thrasher.  One warbler chased another. 

The creek was glassy in the sunshine.  Pelicans were still fishing in these more sheltered waters.  The feral cat put all the birds to flight and made a squirrel anxious enough to run up the post.  Then they stared at each other.  The cat opened its mouth several times.  Despite that, the squirrel made a quick leap out of range.  

Starlings grabbed more than their share again.  The young eagle landed in the pine just over the fence line.  A couple of mourning doves wandered around the birdbath as one courted the other.  Then the Cooper's hawk swooped in and missed them.  It sat on the bench for a moment before flying off to the Northwest. 

Lovely weather

The day started chilly but soon warmed.  I saw the young eagle banking over the creek but there was vegetation in the way.  After lunch, warm sunshine with only a light breeze tempted us to shop at the garden center.  Honeybees sampled the early Spring flowers there.  I carried the pocket camera but only took one picture.  The warmth meant that birds weren't as hungry and also lured out bugs for them to eat.  The suet and barkbutter balls did get visitors, but they didn't linger. I saw bluebirds, blue jays, warblers, a mockingbird, and red bellied woodpeckers.  The creek was full of cormorants and mallards.  The sky was intensely blue.  

Sunshine

Cold again, so I put out barkbutter balls which made the blue jays happy.

A pair of hooded mergansers paddled by.  

Dreary

The day began warm but the temperature dropped. It was gray and damp all day.  I didn't see much except a female bufflehead amd a white throated sparrow before evening.  At twilight, a couple of egrets entertained me and disturbed some mallards. The mallards, two drakes and one female, were feeding and one of the drakes was fond of tipping head end under water and rear straight up.  When the two egrets noticed each other, they stared.  Then one flew away up the lake and the other followed. But the light was too far gone for the camera. 

Still warm

The sky was mostly overcast but there were flickers of sunshine and I saw the thermometer reach 68°.  The yellow rumped warbler stayed busy minding the suet.  Bluebirds stopped in for barkbutter balls.  The woodpeckers stayed with the suet.  Blue jays hunted in the trees and bushes.  Two mockingbirds showed up at the same time and didn't get into a fight.  I wonder if they were potential mates? 

I think this is the first year that the weather hasn't damaged the camellia buds before they were finished blooming.  Despite the warmth, pelicans and cormorants did not desert the creek for wider waters.  But I saw another dead fish floating and I think a buzzard spotted it too.  I caught glimpses of a hooded merganser. Turtles blanketed the lake logs and a pintail drake floated past them.  I caught a goose peeking through the fence.