Potpourri of Cute

How has your week been? Mine started out great as I'm prepping and planning for my first go at being a Christmas Bird Count compiler (if you're going to be near Bryce Canyon on Wednesday the 19th come join us - and hope it doesn't snow!). That is all going well, but things went downhill fast from a personal standpoint when my primary computer decided to go south on me Wednesday. Nothing is lost except time, thankfully, and, as it is, all but a few of many thousands of images are backed up in triplicate anyway, so I had no worries there. It's just frustrating and seems the problem is operating system related. The worst now is that it'll take many hours of installing software to get back up to speed. And lost in all that was the post I was working on for this month. The situation doesn't get any better as I'm having to function with a 10 year old slow-as-molasses laptop that Photoshop makes choke - badly. But I still can manage a smile when I think about birds.

So how am I curing my frustration? Well, one way is to overdose on cuteness, and that's exactly what we'll do with some hastily gathered up images of baby birds (well, a couple of them hadn't hatched):

Wood Duck hen and duckling/Port Orange, FL

Red-necked Grebe with eggs/Bemidji, MN

Wood Stork nestlings/Lakeland, FL

Great Egrets/St. Augustine Alligator Farm, FL

Black-bellied Whistling Duck/Viera Wetlands, FL

Canada Goose and goslings/Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge, MN

Tricolored Heron/St. Augustine Alligator Farm, FL
(Bad hair day? That's about what my hair would look like - if I had much.)

Eastern Screech-owlet/Port Orange, FL

Wilson's Plovers/New Smyrna Beach, FL

Least Terns/Ft. Matanzas National Monument, FL

I hope they put a smile on your face as they did mine. Best wishes for a successful CBC if you are participating in one and, of course, have a very Merry Christmas/Happy Holiday season!

(Maybe Santa - who looks a lot like me these days - will bring a new computer . . .)