Hi tweets,

The other day, I was awakened by some loud raptor-esque noises from above. I peeked out to find that it was two sharpies, one chasing the other far overhead. A juvenile landed in a cedar in the greenbelt behind our property. It stayed long enough for me to set up my scope and camera adapter. I hadn't had much luck with the thing in the past, but to my surprise some of the pictures actually came out pretty well. The bird that otherwise would have been a 'blip' on the print, filled up the image. That was pretty neat.

This morning, being such a lovely morning, I decided to try it again, just seeing what birds were out and about. I was impressed. A little sunshine, and all of a sudden the backyard was alive! The feeders and adjoining trees were crawling (or aflutter?) with bushtits and house finches. A song sparrow was lurking in a bush by the pond. A red-breasted nuthatch at the suet feeder started drawing closer and closer to me, inch by inch, until I could have touched him. A stately band-tailed pigeon did a flyby. I caught sight of a female Western Tanager perched in a distance treetop.

Then, just as I had the scope trained on the worst possible spot (trying to get a beautiful male House finch among the red berries), along flies a male Pileated Woodpecker, and lands in the dead top of the sorbus in back. Just as I frantically reset the scope, it flew to the next tree. Again, I started resetting, when I noticed there was a female exactly where the male had been! Then she joined her companion, clinging to the trunk of a dead, leaning alder, straining and stretching to reach the black berries from the branches of my neighbor's tree.

They stayed long enough to let me take some shots. Then the female obligingly returned to the most photogenic position, at the top of the sorbus, and let me take some more. That was nice of her. Now if just one of those shots come out!

Regards,
Christine Vadai
christinevadai at sprynet.com
Mill Creek, WA