Jaci Dawn

At last! Something worthwhile to write about: birds. Specifically, bushtits.

They are one of my favorites. I’ll let you read up on them at Wikipedia and Cornell Lab of Ornithology. They are as tiny as the small hummingbirds, but are as dull grey as hummers are brilliant. What bushtits lack for in color, however, they make up for in nervous flocks. You can never quite count all the bushtits that flit through at one time as they are constantly moving: flitting from branch to branch or leaf to leaf or bush to bush, searching for small spiders, ants, and whatever other insect is available.

When they flit through our yard, I am always held in amazement by the acrobatics, their cheerful gregarious numbers, and their seeming fearlessness. In the summer, I like to water the tree peonies in the early evening so the water pools in the brown leaves and the bushtits will come and take baths. They come and each bird has a peony leaf to bath in. They weigh so little that the leaves hardly dip.

They come to our suet feeder in the winter: I have counted as many as 17 vying for position on a 6″x6″x2″ suet holder.

Today there were only one or two in the suet, the rest were inside the rhododendron hunting the small spiders that are starting to come out. I grabbed my camera and hoped for the best.

I followed them around the yard, capturing only one bird at a time and oftentimes only the empty air. The one that landed in the Hawthorne held his ground for the longest time, flitting from branch to branch, but then – suddenly – he was gone. And in the dizzying heights of the neighbor’s flowering plum that hangs over our yard, I saw another one.

All around me, I could hear them: tsit! tsit! tsit! Maybe they were saying, “Pssst! She’s here! Here! Here!” in a wild game of catch-me-if-you-can.

I took 22 photos.

I chased them from the rhododendron to the feeder to the Hawthorne and on to the holly before I gave up and came inside to download my photos.

Maybe I got one good picture. And I did. Right there in the rhododendron.

But I didn’t see it until I enlarged the photo.

One tiny little bird with a long narrow tail, a slender beak, and plain brown-and-grey feathers, holding still just long enough for the lens to focus and capture him.

One of my very favorite birds.