I am in the midst of processing road trip photos but found I had a few more bird shots on my camera when I pulled off the other photos.  So I'm going to share those with you first.   We are FRIGID here but the past few days it has been sunny at the house (inversion in the valley though).  The cold has definitely increased small bird appetites and they are eating me out of seeds in record time (and I'm making sure the jays aren't included).    They are beginning to be as expensive to feed as the dogs!  Seriously!  haha

I love my woodpeckers and have seen both the hairy and downy pairs but as always my favorites are the nuthatches and they make the cutest sounds.  The white breasted ones have not been around but the red breasted and these (my favorites but don't tell) pygmy nuthatches have been busy.  I'm super happy with how the photos of them turned out as well.

The chickadees are on the suet about as much as the woodpeckers and nuthatches and both eat from the tube feeders as well.

The goldfinches seem to be wintering over well and one day I counted 6 on the feeders.  That is hopeful and they are now all in their winter coats with not a stitch of gold to be seen so I appreciate this last color a great deal. Road trip photos will be forthcoming.   A friend and I took off yesterday as I was beginning to go stir crazy and the weather forecast was favorable.  We had great fun, took the poodles and all went for a snowshoe hike while we were at it.  It was frigid (like -14 when we left) no doubt but was above zero by the time we got home and it is amazing how a little exercise and sunshine warms one's soul!