Dark-eyed Junco

Being - of course - in something of a dither getting reacclimated to being home - I grabbed a pic of a bird out front early this morning and am blipping it.

It did catch my eye because it is a particularly dark version of our juncos. They seem to come in a wide variety of color tones. Generally speaking the males are darker than the females, but there are all sorts of other different color things that happen. A lot of them look browner, even pinkish sometimes. I thought this fella was particularly snappy with a sharp dark/white distinction.

In other bird news, The Husband said that there were - at one point while I was away - eighteen male cardinals out front, plus a whole lot of females. This is notable not only because eighteen is high (I usually don't see more than ten or twelve males at one time), but even more because it means he was putting food out for the birds - which I did ask him to do but didn't think he would. And he was looking at the birds. Huge breakthrough. Maybe he'll get hooked... HAHAHAHAHA!