I swear, it’s as though I’m running a gull portrait studio, here. They come, they pose, they eat everything in sight. Bastards.
(Another quick drive-by birding. Awfully busy, this week.)
It’s been a disgusting, humid, wet, rainy, clammy day, and I’m tired, so I’ll get straight to the pictures, shall I?
Wet House Sparrow
Wet Crows
This poor crow is my most miserable visitor, of the day. He shakes like a mad thing, but the raindrops keep falling on his head.
A pack of crows — five or six of them, all told — spend twenty minutes flying from one side of the courtyard to the other, bawking furiously all the while. I look on, mystified. What strange ritual is this? Do they like flying in the rain?
Wet Gullie Bastards
This gull has given up on dry land. The puddles — they’re everywhere!
(In fact, he’s having a drink. The gulls seem far less perturbed by the rain than the other birds. Probably because they spend so much time in the water.)
Little drops of water adorn the top of this gull’s head. The rest of him looks surprisingly dry: his feathers haven’t bunched up, like the other birds’. Must be some kind of waterbird adaptation, like webbed feet.
Wet Finches
I’d hoped to intercept some wet chickadees, and maybe a wet hummingbird, to round out the parade, but those had the sense to avoid the downpour.