Suddenly, as if they’d never even left, the finch sock is covered in goldfinches. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of a goldfinch in months, but there they are, all in winter drab but unmistakable.  There are still juncos on the ground, and there’s the usual pack of titmice and Carolina chickadees, assisted by male and female cardinals, and a trio of crows hanging out in the tops of the pine trees.

And two buzzards circling off in the distance, but that’s pretty much a constant around here. This is major buzzard territory.

And that, pretty much, is all the birds I ever see out here. Oh, once or twice a random sparrow, but it’s rare. I never appreciated the funnelling effect of living in a city  in terms of species diversity to my feeder. Hopefully it’ll pick up a bit in spring, or maybe I just ought to keep binoculars up here and see what I’m missing.

I never see woodpeckers in the front yard for some reason–in the back, sure, but not in the front. Whether this is a failure of vision from my window, or whether they just like the back better, hard to say. (I’ve seen every type of woodpecker found in North Carolina–except the red-cockaded–out back, mind you, so there’s no lack of diversity.) 

Haven’t added to my lifelist significantly out here–the Common Goldeneye was the first addition in months, and that was from Michigan–but with a hundred and eighty-odd birds on t’ol list, I’ve gotten a lot of the low-hanging avian fruit locally. Once the spring migration hits, I’ll see about getting up at the crack of stupid now and again and going out to the lake.

Had a dream last night that I turned into a kingfisher. Would have been much more spiritual-woo if I had not then witnessed a murder by a roving band of kayaking cannibals, returned home, and had to communicate where exactly the body had been left through a power-point presentation (Kingfishers are terrible at mime, but can do a lot with a laser pointer) conducted in a bathroom stall, projector being run by my buddy Jason, who did not seem terrible fazed by the fact that I was now a grumpy diving bird. (Just once, I’d like a transformational dream that, y’know, was all enlightening, possibly with a New Age flute-and-drum soundtrack, instead of "By the way, it’s a totally normal dream for you, except that you have to deal with the fact that you’re now a chicken.")