I had intended to go look for one of the many snowy owls being reported around Minnesota today--someone reported one in Carver County just to the west of where we live on Thanksgiving Day. Alas, snow started at 5am this morning and was quite beautiful, however, that combined with people's mad dash to get to shopping malls for great holiday deals made me think about staying home and getting some writing done instead.

For giggles I set up the NovaBird Camera and got a shot of a downy woodpecker that decided to forgo the suet log and eat some peanuts and sunflower hearts from the seed feeder. Crazy woodpecker, did he bother to notice that I had put the fancy cashew suet in the log today? No!

Meanwhile, when not writing I'm brushing up on ivory-billed woodpecker stuff--I leave for Arkansas a week from Sunday! While reading up on ivory-bills in my bird library, Non Birding Bill created a super cool playlist on my iPod that includes calls and pecking of ivory-billed woodpeckers and even downloaded some tracks of similar sounding birds like blue jays and nuthatches. What a guy! Everybody should have a techno savvy Non Birding Bill.