The magic is gone, the joy is gone, but some birds are still here. This morning there was a black-chinned hummingbird sticking its darning needle-like bill into the ponciana blooms.
Could have taken a pic if I hadn't used my D3100 in the dark on other settings that I could not change in time. I use a 300mm Nikkor lens from the 1970s coupled with a 1.5X teleconverter on my late model digital camera. This means all settings are manual including focus, and I have to guess at exposure. Example, f/8 @ 1/640 @ ASA 1600.
In the last week or so I saw:
After hearing a strong-voiced call from the front yard I opened the door to find a cardinal, male, perched on a branch of the butterfly bush. Quite gray on the back so that I thought at first it might be a female. But there was a distinct though small black patch around and below the beak. May have seen ths one before at the feeders in the back yard, but this was not the cardinal that repeatedly visited starting with the late December snow.
A little gray bird with no markings, smaller than a house sparrow, was high in a bush singing as I was in the alley. Never heard the like. Chirping, musical notes, churring, chirping. No idea what it was. I was under 15 feet away but my glasses were dirty and my eyes less than at their best. Pretty sure there were no markings other than darker gray above, lighter gray below.
A female pyrrhuloxia dropped by very briefly at an empty feeder a couple of days after the other one was killed. Did not see her or any pyrrhuloxiaa again.
I'm going to rig up a bird bath from a plastic trash can lid on top of a plastic drum. For years I've been furnishing water to birds, cats, stray dogs, whatever, in a gallon pan placed well away from cover in short clipped grass. Safer that way, so birds can see a cat stalking them.
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