Post Stella

Not using the back door for a while

We got 18" of grainy, heavy-as-wet-sand, white stuff. My hubs shoveled three times. I shoveled some, but not as much as usual. My shoulder's really not happy with me. Today, my hubs flew out to SF for business, and won't be back to next Wednesday. Sigh.

Footprints sink down 18"

At least the sun is out today. And we got a few unexpected visitors to the bird feeder. Like a pair of redwing blackbirds. They usually reside in marshy areas. Not sure what they do in the winter, but they're not normal visitors to our feeder. Today, I finally got a bunch of shots of the smaller red-bellied woodpecker. They are a lot more skittish than the downeys or any of the other birds. But they have a distinctive cry like a small yappy dog so I know when they're in the trees. The All About Birds web site calls that the "Cha Call" and you can hear it (click here). Of course, I've yet to see an actual Red-Bellied Woodpecker with a red belly. At first I thought they were Flickers. We've had those. As I look at my photos again, I'm wondering if this isn't a Northern Flicker, but the website AllAboutBirds.org shows me the tan-yellow image of a bird that's not the one in the feeder. I have, however, heard that bird's distinctive wik-wik wik call. (Click here for that link.) Just not lately.

Last year we had an abundance of black capped chickadees. This year it seems to be a large family group of cardinals, with males outnumbering the females 6 to 2. A lone blue jay and a single grackle also come to the feeder. And the cooing mourning doves were fighting over seed yesterday.

Male Redwing Blackbird

No school today but roads have been plowed and salted. My son has a school social tomorrow evening, and he'll be bringing a bag of donated "gently used" plushies for the Dana Farber Cancer foundation. I'll be at the gym in the morning. I hope the shoulder settles down a bit.

Chickadee, Woodpecker, Sparrow