Spring????

Wanted to do a posting today in honor of it being the first official day of spring but oh my!  The weather has been horrendous.  My daughter on the island tells me it is sunny over there and I see now that the wind is picking up and the rain has stopped so I guess better weather is on it's way.

We did do a very quick walk just to the boat launch and wouldn't you know it, birds we don't normally see lately were there.....the little Bufflehead crew had increased to 7 but there were also 4 female Common Merganser, a Great Blue Heron was flying around squawking, a Belted Kingfisher was 'rattling' and a Red-tail Hawk was circling over head.....no pictures of course!

The pictures I will post (again unedited and taken through the window) are this female Red-shafted Northern Flicker....

and a back view of this male hybrid....

in this view of the male you can see he has quite 'golden' coloration...

there is that 'eye-browed' Steller's Jay again....

I'm still waiting for my first Hummingbird.  Two neighbours now have reported they've had hummers at their feeders, one for sure was an Anna's, not sure about the other one.