For the birds!

I had gathered critter pictures of all sorts for tonight's post; lo and behold, there were enough bird pictures alone. Let's start out at Lynx Lake again, with my youngsters, both of whom had cameras working. The south end of the lake is where the water birds have learned to expect their rations from us suckers. But with all that ice, how do they handle things? The crowd hangs out at a hole in the ice, way off. As soon as likely marks show up, a parade of birds forms up, heading toward the shore.

As the drakes and their ladies near their benefactors, they leave these curious trails in the ice.

The wrong move and they take to the air. Thanks, sson, for this great shot!

In the meantime, a little Oregon juncos steps out on the ice to get his share of goodies.

The juncos tend to hide in the nearby trees and shrubs.

And here's the prize picture from the outing -- a nuthatch hanging upside down either to get a drink of water or perhaps to catch a juicy critter in the mud. If you ever see a small bird climbing down a tree trunk headfirst, you can be sure it's a nuthatch; it's our only bird that does such a trick. Mud? Water? Yes, there was a small margin that was melted at the lake's edge.

Elsewhere at the lake, this raven played hide and seek with the sson, who finally got a nice shot of Roscoe taking off.

GrannyJ finally got her own bird shot a couple of days ago. A fleet of sparrows was around and about; this pair sat still long enough for me to take their portrait.

Linkage: Earlier today, I received one of those email posts with a bunch of wonderful pictures attached. This particular lot consisted of fabulous paper cut-outs done by one or more artists. Of course, I passed the email on to friends, receiving a grump from my dotter in return. Not directed at me specifically, but at the very bad habit people have of harvesting pictures from web sites, then passing them along without any credit whatsoever, jumping copyright protection in the process. Bless her, she passed along the website for artist Peter Callesen who actually created the cut-outs. Do visit the site; he's done some remarkable work.