If you follow this blog, you know that we planned an extensive trip to the Southwest and California this winter with our Airstream. We have completely cancelled the trip. Mary has just been preliminarily diagnosed with lymphoma and we are readying ourselves for the final results and the road ahead to recovery. We’ll learn more this week and I’ll likely post something to follow this. I suspect that there won’t be a lot of birding posts or photos here for a while – we have a challenge ahead.

It is comforting to see the local birds at the feeder — the Black-capped Chickadees give us great delight as do the many woodpeckers and nuthatches — even the ravenous Blue Jays that come to our back deck. We’ll soon have juncos, pine siskins, and some of the other winter birds.

Here are a few shots I took this afternoon of our chickadee friends.