When I went out to setup the feeders this morning (I bring them in each night because of the bears) I noticed that the platform feeder (which I do leave out) was upside down. My first thought (fear) was that the bears were back, but given that local cats sometimes hide under this feeder and I've seen raccoons all over it, I quickly discounted that possibility.

Back to bird counting. My feeders are visible from my home office chair, so I have all day to record the birds that catch my eye. Each day I record the largest number of a given species I see at the same time. This is sufficient for most species, but for those where males and females are easily identified, I record the largest number of each sex I see simultaneously. All of the local woodpeckers fall into this category, and I have seen 2 pair of Downy Woodpeckers here recently. But not today.

Anyway, here are the totals for the day.

Later in the day I looked out the windows on the other side of the house and noticed fresh bear tracks on the frozen surface of the pond, no more than 10 feet from the end of the driveway. Here are some images:

I places a quarter in the middle of the footprint to give a sense of scale.

This footprint measured 7.5 inches long...

...by 5 inches wide.

Here you can see that the bear's stride is about 18 inches long.

No bird pictures today, but tomorrow my friend Bill and I are going to Parker River National Wildlife Refuge in Newburyport, MA in search of Snowy Owls and anything else interesting we can find.

And I will be sitting out in my blind hoping for good photo ops around the feeders. I guess I'll have my can of bear repellant when I sit out in the blind the next couple of days.