Water colour version

Something just isn't feeling right about Flickr yet again. Wondering if some of my photos are not showing up on some people's Contact page, like happened the day before yesterday.

It snowed again last night. The temperature this morning (18 November 2015) is -4°C (windchill -11°C) and I suspect everywhere will be very slippery.

In order to make this photo just about usable, I put it through a watercolour filter. In the original shot, the post and seeds were nice and sharp, but the little Red-breasted Nuthatch was rather blurry. The filter kind of evened things out a bit.

"An intense bundle of energy at your feeder, Red-breasted Nuthatches are tiny, active birds of north woods and western mountains. These long-billed, short-tailed songbirds travel through tree canopies with chickadees, kinglets, and woodpeckers but stick to tree trunks and branches, where they search bark furrows for hidden insects. Their excitable yank-yank calls sound like tiny tin horns being honked in the treetops." From AllABoutBirds.

www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Red-breasted_Nuthatch/id

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-breasted_nuthatch

Two days ago, 16 November 2015, would have been my older daughter’s birthday. Feeling that I needed to get out for a while, I met up with a group of friends for a three-hour walk in Weaselhead. It had snowed a bit overnight and, though it was mostly sunny, the temperature was around 1°C. This meant winter jacket and winter boots complete with ice-grabbers as the paths were very icy and slippery. 27 species of bird were seen. including this little Red-breasted Nuthatch. Only two or three people saw what they reckoned was an owl (Great Horned) in flight from the forest. A Snow-shoe Hare in its white, winter coat was just about visible, hiding in a tangle of bushes.

We had quite good views of several White-winged Crossbills. These are such colourful birds - at least the males are. The females are a greenish yellow, but still beautiful. Their bills are crossed, to enable them to get the seeds out of the cones that hang from the tops of tall Spruce trees.

The list of birds seen:

1.Canada Goose-200+
2.Swan sp.,-7
3.Mallard-4
4.Common Goldeneye-1 f.
5.Northern Goshawk-1
6.Rough-legged Hawk-1
7.Killdeer-1
8.Ring-billed Gull?-1
9.Great Horned Owl-1
10.Downy Woodpecker-4+
11.Hairy Woodpecker-1
12.Northern Flicker-2
13.Blue Jay-4+
14.Black-billed Magpie-20
15.Common Raven-2+
16.Black-capped Chickadee-50+
17.Boreal Chickadee-4
18.Red-breasted Chickadee-1
19.White-breasted Nuthatch-1
20.Bohemian Waxwing-100+
21.Dark-eyed Junco-1+
22.Pine Grosbeak-10+
23.House Finch-1
24.Red Crossbill-1 f.
25.White-winged Crossbill-75+
26.Common Redpoll-30+
27.House Sparrow-6