February 3: Not seeing

Spent a good part of this morning in the toasty warmth of a house with big windows that look out onto an impressive array of bird feeders. We were there in hopes of seeing a Hoary Redpoll among a flock of Common Redpolls. This big, pale, arctic finch is an infrequent visitor to the coast of Maine, and would have been a life bird for my husband and me. But when we arrived, we heard those painfully familiar words, "It's been here all morning. It was here five minutes ago!" Needless to say, we didn't see the Hoary Redpoll.

We did, however, enjoy these things, which more than made up for not seeing it:

• prior to redpoll quest--breakfast with friends over which we dawdled happily, perhaps leading to us "just missing" the Hoary;
• several close views of Common Redpolls, a pretty bird that I don't get many chances to observe closely; 
• watching "Nature" on PBS on a huge, high def TV in the long breaks between flock visitations;
• friendly hosts who didn't mind having three people they barely knew sprawled on their living room floor all morning; and 
• a chance to eat pizza for lunch at The Old Goat in Richmond. 

Sometimes not seeing the bird

brings other things

into closer focus. 

December 27: Riders on the storm

A nor'easter sent snow and freezing rain gusting around my office today. I live too close to work for the weather to be an excuse not to show up, and we didn't lose power, so I put in a full day there. I was, however, pleasantly distracted for much of that time by the birds flocking my tiny window feeders. The regulars--chickadees and titmice--showed up, of course, and what I think is a solitary White-breasted Nuthatch. And then some finches I hadn't seen in a while made an unexpected appearance: goldfinches, their yellow throats looking positively sunny against the snow, Pine Siskins, and at least three redpolls--a boreal visitor I've only had at my feeders a couple times before. The finches chattered away as they chowed down; I could hear them through the window despite the roar of the wind.

Redpolls peck seed from snow.
I catch myself thinking
of raspberries.

Redpoll visitor from last year (window too splattered with snow to get a photograph today!)