Can you tell I've been taking more photographs lately? I'm carrying my camera everywhere I go, and as a result this has turned into more of a photoblog than a storyblog. Sorry.

Kris phoned me this morning to tell me about birds. Before she left for work, three flickers were at the kitchen feeder, fighting over the food. They made strange clucking noises that we haven't heard before. Kris hypothesizes that this clucking is some sort of aggressive posturing. She says the flickers weren't happy with each other. (We've had what I've called a "mated pair" of flickers around the place since last fall; this is the first time I've been aware of a third bird.)

Yesterday, Kris stayed home to paint the exterior of our new clawfoot tub. (The tub is now split-pea green.) During the day, she was entertained by scrub jays. There's a small cadre of what we believe to be adolescent males in the tall trees behind our house. These young jays squawk and flit and make a nuisance of themselves. Kris says it's as if they don't quite know how to act yet, and it's true. This morning while I was getting dressed, Nemo was at the french doors in the bedroom, crouched and peering through the screen. Just outside was one of these unusual adolescent jays, watching him. The bird was slightly smaller than a normal jay, and its head and shoulders were an ash grey rather than blue. "It looks like it's bald," I told Kris.

Over the weekend, we spotted a new bird. It was perched on our new antique feeder, grabbing the seeds from the inner ring. (The birds can't seem to figure this feeder out. One crow managed to snag all of the peanuts from the outer ring, but it's the only other bird we've seen use this feeder.) Here's a shaky photo I snapped from the kitchen. (This photo has been severely cropped, though these are the actual pixels the camera produced; this is a detail of a much larger image.)

What bird is this?

The mystery bird used the feeder all day Sunday. Simon noticed. Periodically throughout the day, he'd climb the dogwood to check for snacks.

The kitchen feeder was visited by a flock of finches on Sunday morning. The finches travel in bubbling groups, and can be seen swarming from bush to bush. They visit our feeder for suet several times a week. (Well, we notice them several times a week; they're probably there several times a day.)

Also over the weekend, we were saddened to lose one of our trees. "Simon's tree", an old, weak, hollowed thing near the road, succumbed to the weight of the midsummer rain, and a main branch collapsed.

We had planned to plant another tree closer to the road this fall, and then let it grow to maturity while the old tree died. The old tree seems to have its own time table, though. Fortunately, it's still alive enough to send up suckers. Kris has agreed that we can let one of the suckers grow to replace its parent.

Sorry for being so photo-centric lately. I hope it doesn't make the pages take too long to load.

On this day at foldedspace.org

2004 — Thunderstorm!   As I lay in bed, my eyes closed, breathing deeply, my rest is interrupted every thirty seconds by bright flashes of light. A few seconds later the sky rumbles and roars.

2003 — Symmetry   In which I reuse old photos for Photo Friday.