The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The "good" from my title - first of all, the weather!  Actually, the past few days I would call it "wonderful",  not just "good".  But I've always thought that talking or writing about the weather can get boring pretty quickly, so let's move on to other things.  

This morning was good for birding.  On my morning walk, I added four more returned migrants  to our 2014 property list (which brings it to 55 as of today in case you are wondering).  The first 'new' bird that I saw was a Ruby-crowned Kinglet.  I stood quietly and watched it for awhile, then as it came closer I thought I'd try to get a photo for you.  So far, so good.  Now for the "bad".   As in, some bad photography.  These little birdies are very hard to photograph!

They move about constantly, so they are hard to follow, much less focus a camera on!  But I kept trying.  The next one is a little out of focus, but you can see a glimpse of its' red crown.

The kinglet is still in the same spot in the next photo-- and is really out of focus but you can definitely see the red!
It was about that time I realized the only possible way I could show you this 'other Ruby' (our Dr. Ruby, PHD is a little jealous) was to try to get a video.  

That's not great either, but I hope you enjoy seeing it.  Sweet little bird!  I hope you can hear it singing.  Update:  After I published this, I can see that, at least on my laptop, this is not showing up very well!  (it looked much clearer in my iPhoto). So, I guess that's another "bad".  Here's a link if you'd like to see some better photos and video of the Ruby-crowned Kinglet.

Okay, now we've had the "good" and the "bad", unfortunately next comes the "ugly".  Today was too nice to spend inside, but I still wanted to accomplish something, so I did my annual roadside cleanup.

The garbage wasn't too bad, actually.  This picture was taken in the direction I was heading, and you can see that there is some garbage but not a lot.  I'm hoping it's because people are becoming less apt to throw stuff out their car windows, but it could be because part of last summer our road was closed when a bridge was being replaced.  Either way, it's always interesting to me to see what people throw along the road.  

Luckily, there was only one diaper.  I thought it kind of funny how the leaf was on it.  Even with all the wind today, that leaf was hanging on.  

All the garbage is ugly, but perhaps this broken pair of sunglasses was the ugliest thing I found.

Maybe I'm just not 'cool' but those are some ugly sunglasses.  I almost can't blame whoever threw those out their window!  ;-)

I had my camera over my shoulder while I was picking up garbage (you never know what you are going to see!) Along came another Ruby-crowned Kinglet... singing away and flitting in and out of a Sumac.  Alas, when I tried to turn on my camera, the batteries were dead!  Probably just as well, as I had more work to do and my chances of getting better photos were slim anyway.  

Thanks for sticking with me thru the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Next time, I'll return to just showing you the beauty in our Father's world.