As water sources elsewhere dry up, more and more birds and animals are using the little waterer at Fox Pavilion. This week, a covey of bobwhite quail showed up right about midday. As quail do, they approached covertly, from the back side of the juniper/elbowbush tangle, and began "murmuring" to each other as they discovered the feed I'd just spread. After they'd eaten most of the corn in the mixed feed, they quietly moved back under the juniper and made their way in cover to the other side...then quickly--one at a time and very well spaced--dashed across the Fox Pavilion trail and back into thick cover on the other side.
I had never had such a good view of quail before--usually I see them scurrying away under the elbow bush, round dark lumps with only the striped heads of the males showing any pattern. Here, I could feast my eyes on the intricate feather patterns.	A female came to drink. She sat there over a minute, giving me plenty of time to admire her markings--if not quite as striking as the male's black-and-white head, the female's warm golden-buff is just as attractive. She came closer than this, but fled when I moved the camera a little to try to follow her. A big camera lens probably looks like a very large hawk's eye, to a quail.
This is the first time I've seen a fox sparrow in the dry woods; in previous years I've seen them only in the creek woods. They like thick tangles of cover, and prefer to drink from the creek.
Our two commonest wrens, winter and summer, are the Carolina and the Bewick's. This is the Carolina: short-tailed, cinnamon-brown with a gray-white throat and almost golden breast and belly. They're hard to catch in a shot because some part of a wren is always moving--they flick their tails, flip their wings in and out, jerk their heads...anything and everything on a wren is moving all the time. I caught this one in the process of taking off to flutter down to the water.	The same bird, now down on the rocks just above the water. It was a warm day, and this wren had a plan...
"...Ahhh...this is better...my own private shower-bath..."
"Look! I made it rain!"	"Yes, I'm wet. And the problem with that is...?"
"Hey--what are you doing here--this is MY showerbath!" When the male American goldfinch (in its winter colors, with breeding coloration starting to show through) came down to drink, the Carolina wren took offense. The goldfinch didn't care, but the wren gave it dirty looks until finally...
"Grooming is more important than any stupid interloper."	"Goldfinch? What goldfinch? I don't see any goldfinch..."

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