I didn’t have a lot of motivation to go out looking for critters last Sunday and had managed to create myself a lengthy list of chores that needed to be done at home.

As tough as it was, I made the decision to put work before play and set about doing various things in the yard and around the house. Our local critters had another plan though.

Over the past two years, driven largely by my wife, we have been working on a major renovation of our backyard. This has included ripping out about 3,000 square feet of grass and replacing it with drought tolerant plants and flowers.

For me, one of the benefits is that we are starting to see an uptick in the number of type of birds that visit and that was wholly evident on this morning.

Among the highlights were a black-capped chickadee, an American goldfinch and even a few hummingbirds. They made it a bit hard to stay focused on work as I instead focused my camera on them. 😉