Chickadees!

Today is a bit calmer, though it is still snowing lightly.  About twenty mallards moved through this morning, and some mergansers could be seen fishing a bit further out.  A few crows have been flying by from time to time.  No sign of the gulls.

We do have some new activity at the feeder, however.  Confirmed: tufted titmouse.  In fact, there were three of them perched simultaneously at the feeder!  Here's one of them:


The nuthatch also returned, scooting down the bottom-side of the branch and then pecking around on the top.  Here he is in the tree:


and at the feeder:

And then there was a new bird!  Smaller than the titmouse and with a tiny little bill.  I looked it up and there it was: black-capped chickadee.  "Usually the first to find a new feeder," it said in Birds of Michigan.  Well, not the first, but pretty close!  And now it's the chickadee that is tough to get a picture of.  Will have to wait for next time.

So my stack of reference books now looks like this:

The one on the top is the most useful at the moment, and is organized by color.  That is, if you see a black and white bird, you just turn to the black and white section and leaf through until you find the bird you're looking for.  They start small and get bigger, so the first bird is the black-and-white warbler, measuring in at 5 inches, and the last is the bald eagle at 31-37 inches with a seven-foot wing span.  I am finding this organizational system very handy.

As you can see, there are a lot of brown birds; hence the moniker "LBJ," I suppose.  None of them have shown up at the feeder these past few days, so I have yet to venture into this section.  When they come, though, I will be ready!