Road trip

Driving up Rt. 95 through Virginia, this view always catches me by surprise. It's the National Museum of the Marine Corps, but it looks like the building tipped over.





We drove up to Washington DC to watch my husband's granddaughter play in a volleyball tournament. She's the pretty one with the long legs and long dark hair. Yes, I know, that describes the everyone on the team.





Here she is serving...





This is the closest they came to winning any of their games -





I took tons of photos of blurry motion which I won't post. Good thing she stood still for at least one photo with the team mascot.

Lunch!

Every morning our birds fly in for their daily ration of mealworms and Zick dough. This afternoon was clear & sunny - perfect for photos, so I put out a second serving to draw them in. The pine warblers and bluebirds always show up first.


Are those mealworms down there?





I thought so!





I love this one - it looks like I tossed a worm to him and he caught it...








As usual, the titmice and wrens were forced to wait until the bluebirds left.

Pine siskin

Our home was built in the 1960s as a summer lake house. It has a very high ceiling in the living room, lots of glass and apparently not much insulation. In an effort to keep the house a little warmer for the winter, we've covered our sliding glass doors with plastic - you know the kind they sell at Lowe's that you tape up, then shrink with a hair dryer until it's "crystal clear". Well, it's not crystal clear as you can tell by the cedar waxwing photos in my previous post.


For days I've been trying to take photos of the few pine siskins that hang out with the flocks of goldfinches at our feeders. For days, I've taken a lot of blurry photos through that layer of glass and plastic.


This morning I figured I was in luck. The door of our screen room had blown open and a pine siskin had flown inside and couldn't seem to find his way out. Camera! Time for some nice clear close up photos!


Hold still...





Hold still... (Click on the photo below to enlarge and you'll see he looks quite "ghostly" here with a transparent head.)





A little better...





Thank you!

What we've been missing...

Ten years ago we moved from upstate NY to North Carolina, but this is the first winter that we didn't head even farther south to Florida. We're really enjoying the winter here, and the wild birds love having us here to put out mealworms, Zick dough & sunflower seeds. Last week this little flock of cedar waxwings paid us a visit. Prior to this, I'd only seen waxwings at Cape May and my husband had never seen them.





Just 4 feet from our bubbling bird bath, they preferred to drink from a tiny puddle on our deck railing.








cedar waxwings

flames

Nothing better than a little fire on a cold night...





but it looks like somebody is in the fire - spooky!