A Whole New Bird

I saw a flash of red out on the suet pellets and saw a bird I'd never seen before. It stayed long enough for me to take a few pictures and once it had flown away I looked it up. It's a Red-headed Woodpecker. Not to be confused with a Red-bellied Woodpecker. This one is black and white without stripes and has a full ruby red head and collar. A good sized bird so it showed up well on the pictures. I was thrilled.

The female Oriole has been visiting the grape jelly every day since I got home and refilled the dish on the feeder. I haven't seen the male but then I don't spend all day staring out at the feeder.

I did see this male House Finch having a nice long orange snack this afternoon. He was very focused and spent quite a bit of time pecking away at the orange half. He also hopped down to the grape jelly but after dipping his beak in a couple times went back to the orange.

I realized this morning that I forgot to post yesterday's watercolor effort. I tried my hand at a yellow iris. The background is a little too dark, I think, but I'm pretty happy with the way the flower turned out. KA commented that she thought I did better on small pictures so I'm working on the postcards again.

Today's watercolor is of the bleeding hearts. It's okay. I like the colors and the shapes of the flowers but it may be too detailed. That seems to be my style, actually. I struggle with the more impressionist style I'd like to be better at. But in its defense, it turned out the way I imagined it.

The Gratitude Journal for today is pretty simple. We had a full sunny day after days and days of dreary, rain, and overcast. Then there was the new bird to look at. And I spent a little time excavating the floor of the linen closet. It's one of those catch-all places that doesn't get sorted out much so things have been piling up down there for a while now. Today was the day it got unpiled and mostly tossed. I didn't really need six elastic bandages, now did I? Two is plenty.

I had the second to the last Novel critique group Zoom today. I got some good comments and, I hope, gave some too. This has been an interesting and profitable experience. I'm glad that I decided to sign up last winter. Afterward I worked more on my hook sentence and wrote the first draft of the blurb. That's a funny word, isn't it? Blurb. It sounds like something you'd have to mop up.

--Barbara