Birds In My Backyard

I keep meaning to write a retrospective about 2017, but it was such a crazy year that I've been putting it off and putting it off, and as a matter of fact I'm still putting it off. Therefore, have a blog post about my latest hobby - taking photographs of the birds that show up on (or near) our little back porch.

 Chickadeeee! I had one of these little guys telling me off today because I went outside to add more bird seed, and he apparently was not pleased I interrupted his session with the suet feeder.

Dark-eyed junco. We get a lot of these, so I have a lot of pictures of them. They also sit still longer than some of the other birds, which is useful.

We have some supremely acrobatic white-breasted nuthatches, too.

 I'm not entirely certain what this guy is, but I saw him once and then never again. He hung out on the suet feeder for a little while before deciding he couldn't, in fact, nest in our weird pillar things.

 DOWNY WOODPECKER!!!

 This monster is a red-bellied woodpecker. I sent a picture of him to my friend Elise and was like "WHAT THE HECK IS THIS??" She was able to reassure me that this is an actual type of woodpecker, not something that got into the local nuclear waste facility.

 Suspicious Blue Jay. We had a group of three hanging out for awhile, but they've been MIA lately.

My favorite thing about blue jays is how they constantly look like they're plotting something nefarious.

 And now - my cranky cardinal! There are probably about five that switch in and out, but I always just assume it's the same guy and that he hates everything. Look at that face.

 Here he is hating me from the planter.

 Here he is being offended by the very possibility of my presence.

 Here he is grumpily surveying the suet feeder in all its glory. He didn't stay up there for long.

Not the most elegant of pictures, but I think he deserves it. We can't all be classy and flashy all the time, cranky cardinal.

Anyway, these are the birds that come to visit sometimes. And, of course, we have one additional visitor. Thankfully he hasn't figured out how to get from the tree to the porch - he's too damn fat.

What a jerk.