Well, I finished the first draft of the calendar this weekend, although as I type this I realize that I forgot to include any major holidays in the first draft. Although, with all the fabulous bird info in there, do we really care what date Thanksgiving falls on??

Nuthatch with a chip the size of a peanut on his shoulders.

Of course I was a tiny bit distracted by birds at the cabin. There were four thug white-breasted nuthatches out and about. Nuthatches are small and cute to begin with, you through in that nerdy nasally "yank yank" call they give and you can't help but enjoy them. However, when they try to be bad boys they just can't quite pull it off. They were flitting at each other and fighting in mid-air, even momentarily pinning each other on the ground. When other species moved in, the would yank louder and faster and lunge at them. I'd never seen anything like it.

Later in the day a tail free chickadee tried to feed. He had a tough enough time keeping his balance let alone dodging the nefarious nuthatches. If it didn't seem like such a weird molting year I would guess the nuthatches had done away with his tail.

Chickadee without a tail...was this the result of nuthatch gang violence?

On a very "people are nice" note. The girl that lives in the cabin next door asked if I would mind if she put bird feed in the feeders when I'm not around since she was getting into watching the birds. How can you beat that. She said that she would buy some seed, but figuring she was new to this and would probably get a not so good mix, I left her with some medium sunflower chips for good measure.