Crazy Catbirds

This is a new one for me - I've no idea what the catbird is doing here.  He puffed up, tilted to one side, splayed his tail and lifted one wing...almost as if to say "look at me!"  It looked like a combination of aggression and cooling behavior mixed in with a bit of clownishness.  And in case you are wondering, after about a minute, he lowered all his feathers and resumed life as a normal catbird, sleek and elegant.  Honestly, you can't make this stuff up.

I finally had a good night of sleep and even slept extra late.  Guess my body needed it.  Once I got myself up and moving and had a cup of tea and some avocado toast, I headed out for a quick paddle.  Only stayed out about an hour, but it was windy so I got a good workout.  Not much in the way of photos because it was too windy for most of the dragons and the birds were being evasive.  But it was really enjoyable.  

Since the humidity is much lower today, I took advantage and spent most of the afternoon outside.  So much going on!  It's clear that all the AOG athletes are in training, polishing up their routines, working on every nuance of their performance.  The Mountain Mint Arena and Canteen was packed with wasps and bees.  The phlox was buzzing with both Clearwing Moth teams.  Hummers could be seen and heard all over the garden.  And the catbirds...well, who the hell knows what that was all about!  Only 4 more days until the opening ceremonies - you can feel the excitement building!

If you don't know about the AOG, please click HERE for details.  Until the start of the Games, tag your posts #aog21pre.  Day one of the AOG will be 23 July and the tag for that day will be #aog211.  Don't worry, I'll remind you again (and again, and again).  Let's make this the best AOG ever!  

Today's chocolate is dark caramel crunch (with special thanks to Wildwood for introducing me to Volo Chocolates from Sonoma, California).  I may have mentioned this a time or two, but I don't ever want to even contemplate a world without dark chocolate...

xo
Debbi

PS:  I went to the local WalMart to pick up some baby aspirin and bird food and was gratified to see at least a third of the people masked.  Keeping in mind that we have no mask mandates anymore, this seems to indicate that people are taking the Delta Variant quite seriously.