Okay, we're sick of February. No wonder it's the shortest month, if it were any longer, people would simply lose their moorings. I know they do that now, but if February were 31 days long, they might become unhinged for no reason at all, other than the number of days in a very long, dark, cold, endless winter month.
Our favorite walking path was closed for ten days as a result of the windstorm we had earlier this month. We finally had a chance to walk it on Friday when the sun came out for a short while. My photo senses seem to have gotten rusty. I was aimlessly looking at the pattern of light and shadow on the bay when a huge raptor was over my shoulder behind me. All I could manage were blurry photos of one of the largest birds we've ever seen. It could have been an immature bald eagle, but it was so big. Our fantasy was that it was a Golden Eagle. It was a dark brown bird. You decide.
We did get to see an American Coot hiding in the reeds in the marsh. What a fantastic white bill on that Rail. Yes, it's a Rail and not a duck, which it is commonly mistaken for. The books tell me that Coots have green feet. Oh, we would have loved to have seen that, simply for the color green, like spring, which we are longing for.
I went out on Saturday to fill the bird feeder. The birds have gotten very hungry. Even with the Stellar's Jays gone, they are going through food faster now than in early winter. Two little brown birds stayed at the feeder long after all the others had flown away at my approach. After they left, and I filled the feeders, I went in the house to get the camera, and back out to photograph them. It was only after I looked at the photos that I saw that they were Pine Siskins with that wonderful hint of yellow on their wings. Such cute little birds. They could almost make up for the lack of warmth, light, and color. Almost.
It was 40 degrees all day on Sunday, a bit of a drizzle, and the light in the cloudy sky never changed, except to turn into night. How was it where you live?
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