(no subject)

[kayre]

The beauty of the ordinary... she's just a female purple finch (with a mouthful of seed) but isn't she cute?



We have lots of white breasted nuthatches here, but I never saw a red breasted the first four years we lived here. One showed up looking miserable and bedraggled the morning after a thunderstorm in the spring of 2003, and stayed; now we have dozens.



I really don't have any idea why this picture appeals to me, but it does. The plants are dried-up Queen Anne's Lace flowers.



Snow means tracks! Besides human and dog, today I spotted deer, red fox, probable silver fox, and lots of squirrels, plus this adorable little print (4 inches from front paws to tail, probably mouse but maybe chipmunk).



I'm debating whether these are opossum or muskrat tracks. I followed the trail for several hundred feet, long enough to be quite sure that's a tail drag and not a leash. That's a long distance for a muskrat to travel out of water, and I didn't find a spot where it came from or returned to water. On the other hand, it was right along the river bank, and I don't see any trace of an opossum's thumb on the back paws. I guess my bet is on the muskrat. (Someone suggested rat but the habitat makes that pretty unlikely.