Missus

The male Cardinals are all looking pretty tragic at the moment with lots of feathers missing and no sign of their jaunty crests.  For some reason, the females look somewhat better even in spite of being in the middle of their molt.  This one has most of her crest missing, but she still manages to look rather nice. And she did me a favor perching at eye level with a relatively clean background.  Thank you!

It has been drizzly today so I've only gone out for short periods.  I was hoping to catch some migrating warblers but my timing wasn't working today.  Maybe tomorrow.  I also took advantage of the wet soil to pull some overgrown phlox as well as a few weeds.  Unfortunately one of the weeds I chose to pull had tiny little burrs  which are now all over the t-shirt I was wearing.  I tried everything to get them off but nothing seemed to work.  I will try putting it through there wash and see if that helps.  Jax attempted to help me by pulling some off and eating them until he realized they really weren't good.  He also found a roll of paper towels I'd left on the deck and, while I was taking pictures, managed to shred the entire roll.  That was fun.

Charlie is fully back to himself now, thankfully.  He's been downstairs a lot today, swatted Jax more than once, demanded to be picked up and just did all the normal Charlie things.  

My second choice image today was a young tufted titmouse hiding in some zinnias.  See Extra

Haven't made the dark decision today yet.  Maybe something with tart cherries...

xo
Debbi