DAILY BIRDS
Nothing too exciting or unusual has happened lately. The weather is still very warm for late October (though not unprecedentedly so)--up to ninety most days, then cooling down to the sixties in the morning.

Quail continue to visit my quail block, and the pond area often hosts thrashers, sparrows, house finches, goldfinches, starlings, the occasional cardinal and pyrrhuloxia (their numbers are well down this year), cactus wrens, woodpeckers, hummingbirds (these days mostly Anna's), and I apologize to any bird-group I have forgotten. Every morning a young Cooper's hawk drops by between nine and eleven, usually perches on the fence for a while looking around, sometimes stops and drinks at the pond, and then flies away. The picture above is a male Anna's from my old yard.

This morning I watched a beautiful goldfinch stand on the turtle's head and drink from the stream flowing from its mouth.