It’s gonna be a scorcher today.

James left for work, and as I held the door open, I could tell. It was almost room temperature outside at 9 AM. The humidity has not yet hit the truly epic levels it will achieve during the summer, but it’s already damp enough to make you feel like you’re sweating when you aren’t.

I flung the door and windows open. There’s a liver-grey colored thrush with a white eye ring and faint lighter patch along the face roaming around, which I suspect may be a Swainson’s–it doesn’t have the reddish tail of a hermit thrush. (Thankfully, it has breast spots. That mystery thrush was makin’ me loony.)
For some reason, this area I’m in is pretty thrush-heavy. They’re the most common bird I see that isn’t coming to the feeder. Must be their kind of habitat. (Primarily evergreen, some mixed deciduous, turning to more deciduous at the edges, only middling-to-light undergrowth, not swampy but with a nearby streamlet.) They’re only really active in the morning, though–once noon hits, I don’t seem ’em at all. Did see the first brown thrasher of the year yesterday. I remember when I first started birding, having to look up the difference between thrush and thrasher. Now I look at it and think “How could I possibly have mistaken the two? That thing’s TOTALLY built wrong.” So I guess that’s progress of a sort.

Meanwhile, the swamp is beginning to encroach again…I have Digger and sketches for the Big Cool Project to get done this week, gotta finish up some small bits for the cover for the Digger collection, and next week, it’s time to begin editing Black Dogs in earnest. And of course, because I have these things to do, the art, it calls to me…

Also, James has decided he doesn’t want to part with the Frog Tribe painting, so he’s insisting I set the price in the $2500 range, and get it framed. It’s so rare that James REALLY wants to keep art that I yield, despite finding the price mildly absurd. He makes a point, though–all of my jumbo sized art on the walls has sold, or is selling via installment plan. (Actually, I think he often wants to keep art, I just don’t hear about it until I’m packing it up to mail to the new owner and hear a “Noooooo!” in the distance.)

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