Bye

I love these crazy birds.

Could Use a Towel

February Surprise

The first day of February brought this right outside my study window. The first one I've seen in our yard, and a very welcome sight.

Getting Through the Polar Vortex With a Little Help From Your Friends

Local Wildlife

Half of a frantic game of tag wondering where the other half went.

Red-bellied sunbath on a 31 degree day.

Breakfasting On Hazelnuts

Goldfinch and House Wrens

Always good to have goldfinches around.

And a pair of House Wrens setting up housekeeping in a woodpecker's hole. You couldn't ask for better neighbors, although they can be a little noisy.

The Communion of Like Minds (Hypno Squirrel)

Chickadee Uses Double Grip to Eat a Sunflower Seed

How To Sneak Down a Tree

A Bolt of Wildness: First Trip to Clear Creek

The temperature breaks 75 degrees for the first time this year. Seems like a good day for a Clear Creek scout. There are five cars at the parking area. I figure they're on the bluff trail downstream so I head upstream.

If there are any fish about they might like this bead head bugger as much as I do.

The Log Jam Run gets some attention. The water is still up a bit but going down.

I strike out on the deer trails that parallel the stream. I want to get even farther than the last time I was here in December.

I cross to the left bank as I've done before. This time I discover that the bank soon gives way to a rocky bluff. It finally blocks me and I have to enter the creek and try to wade my way farther upstream.

The water deepens. My feet are already wet from my blown out waders. When the current laps at the leak in the crotch I decide to opt for maintaining some degree of dryness and turn back downstream. Next time I'll stay on the right bank. I want to see what's around that bend up there.

A movement on the bank catches my eye: a mink intent on its business, rolling along with its bobbing gait. It sees me and pops into its den halfway down the bank before I can get a closer shot.

I fish my way downstream past the Gates of Moria and back to the Log Jam Run. So much prime water but no fish to be found.

I give the run a go again then switch to another white bugger with a titanium bead and rake the bottom for as far as I can reach.

I climb the bank and drop the bugger deep into a slowly revolving eddy.

A good scout. One of these days there will be fish again. In the meantime I'll settle for the glimpse of that mink, a bolt of wildness lighting up the day.

More and More Birds

The birds are becoming more and more active on these grey warmish days as February breathes her last and March, carrying Spring, pushes its way to the fore.

A Mourning Dove couple bonding for the coming nesting season.

A Tufted Titmouse looking like my energetic little brother back in our childhood crewcut days.

The curious Cardinal, the red Joker in the deck.

Bird Mysteries

The ubiquitous cardinal again, sitting pretty.

Then this. Taking a quick nap? Pretending like he can see me but I can't see him? Listening to vibrations in the branch? Clowning for the camera? My best guess is stropping his bill, but if so he was only down there long enough to give it one good strop.