A wish for feathers

All day everyone has been complaining about the cold and wind and snow so I'm going to shut up about the weather already and talk about birds instead, except to note that the amount of time it took me to bundle up sufficiently to go outside and fill the birdfeeders made me wish I'd been born with feathers.

Here's what I like about where my birdfeeders are located: I can catch a glimpse of birds from just about anywhere in the front rooms of the house, but I can also open up the far window in our bedroom, which lacks a screen, and I can sit there with the camera shooting pictures of birds at the feeders while hot air blows up from the heat vent and keeps me (mostly) warm. It's like being in a bird blind, except I don't have to go outside.

The sound of the window opening always scatters the birds, but if I sit there quietly enough, many of them will come back and stay awhile. Chickadees and nuthatches have no problem with my presence in the window and cardinals hang around by the dozens, but I notice that the juncos that usually scavenge the ground below the feeders tend to stay on the far side of the lawn while I've got the window open. 

And then there are the woodpeckers. I put out oatmeal-studded suet yesterday, which always attracts woodpeckers, including a brilliantly colored red-bellied woodpecker and a little hairy woodpecker that kept coming back for more--until I opened the window.

I suppose my presence there is disturbing, or maybe the light reflecting off the camera's lens scares them off, but generally woodpeckers won't come near the feeders as long as I've got the bedroom window open. So I snapped away at some chickadees and tried to get photos of juncos against the white snow, which is just about impossible to expose correctly--either the highlights are blown or the bird's eyes disappear into a black hole. But while I was focusing on the little black-and-white ground birds, a flash of red caught my eye and I pulled the camera up just in time to catch an elegant little hairy woodpecker checking out the buffet.  

One shot--that's all I got, and it's not particularly clear but I'll take it. I waited a while in hopes that the woodpecker would come back, but eventually even sitting directly above a heat vent was not enough to keep me from freezing, so I had to call it a day. A cold day, yes, and a day full of piercing winds, but spending a little time by my window made it an immeasurably more beautiful day.