Surprise!

I woke up several times last night to the wretched sound of ice hitting the windows which resulted in an icy mess outside this morning.  We probably got an inch or so of snow but mostly we got ice - lots and lots of ice.  I went out to fill the feeders and the ice pellets were coming down fast and fierce.  Which meant an indoors day for all of us.  The precipitation has stopped now but it's not going to warm enough to melt anything so tomorrow morning it will be like a Winter Olympics venue.

Soooo, today's image... the rather plain and ubiquitous female house finch but with a surprise.  As she took a moment to fluff on a branch, she raised her feathers to show off her brood patch!  I was surprised to see this although spring is coming and the birds are all getting ready in their various ways.  The image in Extra shows her literally a second later when her feathers were back in place, brood patch invisible.  The male house finches have been singing their beautiful warbling songs for several weeks and the usual contingent of male red-winged blackbirds have taken up residence in the nearby wetlands, visiting for food throughout the day.  To my surprise, there were a handful of females with them today - the first I've seen all winter.

House finches have kind of an unusual history here.  They were originally a native bird of the southwestern US.  As is often the case, humans meddled. With their beautiful songs, they became popular caged birds.  New York pet shop owners, who had been selling the finches illegally, released their birds in 1940 to escape prosecution after the passage of the Migratory Bird Act; the finches survived, and began to colonize the New York suburbs. By 50 years later they had advanced halfway across the continent, meeting their western kin on the Great Plains. Now they can be found throughout N. America.  


Jax has been running me ragged today but he's currently napping so I am madly trying to work on getting files off my PC and ready to move to the Mac.  Don't want to move things until it's all the way I want it.  I am embarrassed to say that my LR catalogs are sadly long overdue for an overhaul.  I did manage to watch a tutorial on the Mac which was helpful.  More to come.  And I need to book some time with Osuzanna so she can help me with the LR workflow on the Mac.


Dark with caramel today - decadent and delicious.


xo
Debbi