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Frozen
This little fellow is a fighter. We noticed him coming to the feeder in the fall with an injured leg. Here he is in his winter coloration during this extremely cold week (it was 1.4 out the morning I took this picture). His beak is messy and he’s lame, but he can fly and is apparently still fighting.
I took this photo with my 50mm prime lens, and I love the clarity.
Here are a few more visitors out the front window. There are bushes under the hanging feeder, and the birds perch among them between flights to the feeder. Bird bushes. White-throated sparrows ground-feed there, and occasionally squirrels.
Whitethroat in bicycle cap 
Amazingly, a chipmunk woke from hibernation and snatched a few seeds during this cold snap. I’d expect sensible rodents sleep through periods like this. There was also a red squirrel showing great interest in the stone wall from which the chipmunk emerged; I wondered if he was raiding the seed stores of chipmunks and mice in the wall. Eventually he was caught in the act.
One other cool sight from this week: the window over my kitchen sink. I think these are spider webs. though I’m not sure. Who knew? — till the cold weather revealed all secrets.
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Killer Athlete
We have two Cooper’s hawks that pass through occasionally. The one pictured here is, I believe, immature. But the other is an adult, complete with the red flush on its breast, a bluish back, and red eyes.I’ve come to recognize them even in silhouette by the way they perch high up, near the trunks of trees, and also by the way they flick their tails — as though they’re forever dusting.
A few times I’ve walked out to scare them away. I know they need to eat, but I can’t sit by and watch them take our songbirds. I haven’t seen them get one yet this year, but I’ve seen the pursuit.
This morning, though, my songbird altruism backfired — enough to make me reconsider my interference. I saw the magnificent adult land in a tree, and I walked out. My dog ran ahead of me and startled a whole flock of mourning doves out of the brush below where the Cooper was perched. He took off like a shot after them. Last I saw, he had selected one and was bearing down in the distance. I never saw the outcome.
The hawk’s athleticism is so impressive to me! — his quick response, his acceleration and speed, his lightning-fast maneuvers in flight. Amazing…
I won’t be meddling again, though. The doves had been well hidden until I blundered into their life-and-death game of hide-and-seek.
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Misty Morning
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Peter, Peter, Pumpkin-Eater…
…was a squirrel.
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New-to-me warbler
Yesterday morning, I heard what I was sure was a yellow warbler out back in the brush. It turned out not to be a yellow warbler at all — a fact I discovered as I waded through shoulder-high phlox and bushes in my running clothes and bedroom slippers, scanning the trees.
It was this handsome little fellow.
He was impossibly small and impossibly loud — singing his head off.
I heard the garage door go up — the signal that my husband was leaving for work — and crashed back out of the brush to find him standing in the driveway, waiting for me. “Did you see it?” he asked.
“It’s not a yellow warbler!” I said excitedly.
“That right there?” he asked, nodding toward the earsplitting birdsong. I thrust out my camera and showed him.
“Sure enough! What kind is it? Girls, new bird!” he called up to the open dining room window where both girls huddled, waiting to wave goodbye. “Mommy ‘shot’ him!” He understands the fascination with tracking down mystery birds. Last week he spent part of his lunch hour searching bushes near the parking lot where he works until he found that the source of the sonar-like song he was hearing was a prairie warbler.
Back inside, I looked the bird up and learned that he’s a chestnut-sided warbler. (My 11-year-old knew the minute she looked at my picture what kind of warbler it was. That’s what comes of poring over field guides for pleasure!)
I wish my photos were less grainy, but even grainy he’s a remarkable sight — another reminder that the more you look, the more you see.
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Carolina wren
TEA-kettle TEA-kettle TEA! TEA-kettle TEA-kettle TEA!!
Pause. Shake out feathers and puff up round like a pom-pom. Hop into the air, do a 180, and prepare to send your boisterous call out over the landscape in the other direction.
He’s no bigger than a golf ball, but inside he’s the ruler of all he surveys.This little bird is a great favorite in our family. He and his mate have a nest somewhere in the brushy area over our back bank. He and his family will help us out by consuming lots and lots of insects that might otherwise consume lots and lots of our garden.
Apparently these wrens nest in some unusual places! — line-drying overalls, laundry rooms, old boots, planters. Ours are more conservative and just nest in the bushes. It always strikes me as a paradox to see him singing so loudly, telling the world where his territory is, in this season of secrecy for birds who keep their nests hidden away.
