We have a little more action the past few days at our feeder’s in Maine, but it has been a slow winter for feeder birds in yard. Not so in Ohio. Visiting Bill Thompson of Bird Watcher’s Digest at his home last Thursday, it was clear that feeder birds are healthy in Whipple. Either that or I am doing something very wrong in Maine. Bill had to pry me away from the windows. I could have stood all day and taken pictures of the birds. Bill and his wife, the artist and writer Julie Zickefoose, must be used to all the birds outside their windows, but I am not. The close views of active birds were a real treat.

The Northern Cardinal was known as the Red Bird on both sides of the Appalachians (and still is), and Whipple is, at least according to the title of one of Julie’s books, a Appalachian town, so the title is apt in more than one way. This was taken from the Thompson/Zickefoose kitchen, through the living-room and the glass doors out on to a small deck.

Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. –1/3 EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/200th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, contrast (because of the window glass), and sharpness.