Neighborhood Birds

I didn't bring my good camera on this Florida trip. It's too big and heavy, especially with its accompanying lenses. Dave thinks it's silly that I invested so much in a good camera and then don't like to carry it, but as I've mentioned before, I'm a believer in light traveling. I have a secondary camera with a just-adequate zoom lens, and that's what I've been using to photograph neighborhood birds.

The red-bellied woodpeckers have been flocking to our front-yard bird-feeder. It seems weird that they're called red-bellied when their heads are so much more apparently red, but there's also a red-headed woodpecker with an entirely red head.

The blue jays like the feeder too.

We saw several robins in a neighbor's yard. Not very dramatic.

But then we also saw another variety of woodpecker -- a pileated, which was quite dramatic. They're not rare, but they're big and imposing.

My mom said this is a phoebe. You couldn't prove it by me. It was a long way up in a tree.

I think this is a gnatcatcher. Again, not the best photo. I am not much of a bird photographer. The damn things keep moving around!

My brother and his family went home yesterday, leaving me, Dave and my mom with a relatively quiet afternoon. I spent the time reading and planning the next steps of our trip. Today we visit a friend in Tampa and move along to my dad's house.

Last night we watched the Kennedy Center Honors. It makes me feel incredibly old to see Dustin Hoffman and Led Zeppelin among the honorees. And how surreal to see footage of Led Zeppelin from the '70s, with their grimy hair and sweat-streaked skin-tight jeans, strutting and screeching on the stage -- and then see the three surviving Zeps sitting up in the box with the President in tuxedos! The Wilson sisters from Heart sang "Stairway to Heaven" and did a bang-up job, and Kid Rock did a lukewarm version of "Ramble On," which nonetheless reminded me how much I like that song.