Such a lovely day on a greenway in the Pacific Northwest. We visited relatives and walked the greenway in the dusk, brought sooner by a hill to the greenway's west. We found the local chickadees, a fistful of ducks (including American wigeons), winter and Bewick's wrens. It's interesting how spotting a bird so often brings back the memory of seeing it for the first time -- in this case, I remember seeing Bewick's wrens in the upper branches of deciduous trees in an Arizona canyon (Madera) in the winter of 1994.
Also this day we had kinglets. Nothing, I think, quite matches the vivid surprise gift, a $10 bill in a neglected jacket pocket, of the yellow stripe a golden-crowned kinglet shows when it dips its head and you can see its namesake.
Joe enjoyed the "furry trees" and so did we. He picked up a fair number of sticks, and poked the fur.
Later, also, we went to the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge and saw short-eared owls right where they were supposed to be, which is a new experience from a birding perspective. (Owls, and in fact all birds, typically do not have the good manners to appear in locations designed for their enjoyment, and even when they do, they don't when you're there.)
In case you get to Ridgefield, you should probably know: When they say they close the refuge at a particular time? You should believe them. We had to call The Man. He was quite friendly. (A train delayed us.)
