I have zero motivation today.

There’s a coupla things I should be working on. I haven’t been. My brain is shot. Instead, I’ve been taking photos of the little birds, and then organizing and labelling several dozen photos (actually, over a hundred photos, but of that only several dozen tend to come out well enough to save and organize.) and that’s about it. I should do something productive. I really should, but I am just sort of slopped over the chair going “Bllurrrrrghgh…”

I blame the allergy meds I took an hour or so ago. The fact that I felt like this before I took them, too, is immaterial.

Also one of the titmice appears to have mange or something. The top of its head is bare. I was thinking molt, but now I’m thinking “Dude, does that bird have leprosy or something?”

I appear to have a new squirrel as well. In addition to Lumpy, Gimpy (who is getting less gimpy all the time, although he now appears to have a sore on his bad leg of some sort) and Stumpy (whom I saw again last week, but doesn’t appear to be a regular) we now have Notch, an otherwise healthy looking squirrel with a large round chunk taken neatly out of one ear. I only name them when I can identify them semi-reliably, but the ear is pretty obvious. We’ll see if he comes back again, too.

I’m really fired up about photographing the local birds–I think it’s because I’m kicking myself about all the birds I missed at previous places I lived, so now I’m bound and determined to get extensive documentation of every little bird here, so that when I eventually move, I’ll still be able to paint them. (Part of it is more sentimental than that–even my desultory glance-at-the-feeder birdwatching has come to form a fairly significant part of my day, and I want to document that, as well.) Some of them have been easy–the bluebirds, the yellow-rumped warblers, the downy woodpecker. Some are nearly impossible–the northern flickers are exceedingly skittish, and I hardly ever see the Carolina chickadees any more. Some of them I’d expect to be easy aren’t–I haen’t gotten any good ones recently of the Carolina wrens or the white breasted nuthatches. Some of them are very easy–I have enough bluebird photos to paint the Bluebird of Happiness, Glee, Sardonic Amusement, Vague Cheer, and all their related kin. No finches, yet–there’s nyger seed in the mix, but either they haven’t found it or don’t like the location. If worse comes to worse, I’ll set up another sock.

So that’s what I’m doing, that I shouldn’t be. Eh. I’ll call it feeding the muse, I guess.