A Couple Birds

I saw a Downy Woodpecker land on one of the legs of the Adirondack chair on the patio but when I tried to snap a picture it flew away and all I got was a swoop of striped wing. Luckily it flew up to the suet cakes feeder and landed on the side facing me so I could snap another picture and this time I got him. You can see in the background how the snow has melted. There's hardly any left from last month's blizzard and we haven't had a snowfall since.

Then I saw the suet pellets feeder swinging and knew that I'd just missed the Red-bellied Woodpecker. Dang it. Happily he came back a little later and clung to the side of the feeder so I could snap a bunch of pictures and one of them showed the whole bird, not just his tail.

Mark making today was Splashes and Dots. We used watercolor inks and colored papers to make the marks. I managed to spatter black ink on my iPad screen but it was just small spots that I could wipe or scratch off. Whew. An alternate step when doing the Dots was to tip the paper this way and that when the ink was wet so that the dots dripped. I started to do it but then thought better of it. I wanted the contrast between the random splashes and the controlled dots.

I had a hard time thinking of gratitude journal things today. I didn't think of the woodpeckers or I might have included one or both of them. As it is, there's a little room at the bottom of the page where I could add a bird if I was in the mood to do it. Which I'm not.

And the reason I'm not is that I discovered today that I've been returning comments to my Novel Writing online group and they're not able to find my comments. Arrgh! So frustrating. I'm sure it's something that I'm doing wrong but I don't know how to fix it. I learned that I can open up the copy of the submission with my comments on it, copy a link, and attach that to a new email. I'm hopeful that they can open that and get my comments. Honestly I need a kid to help me figure this out but I don't know one that knows anything about Word. *flings hands into the air*

--Barbara