Drought and Songbirds

I started the day miserably with a headache, but thankfully still decided to forge ahead to my mom's and play in the garden.  On the way I even redeemed my rewards card at Ace Hardware to buy some herbs, but upon arriving at the house I realized that my plants were dying from the drought.  That's the problem with living 40 minutes away from your garden.  Things die and there's nothing you can do about it.
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Cursing under my breath, I dragged the hose out and watered the backyard by hand for a while, noticing that my chartreuse colocasia was fading fast and my leather fern was already gone.  I cursed some more. 

We hadn't received rain since the tropical system that fizzled out a month ago, and I'm not entirely sure that the sprinklers have been running enough in my absence.  Of course, the driest area right now  is usually the wettest and the low lying area even flooded every other summer, leading me to situate plants that love wet feet there, such as papyrus, gingers, and elephant ears.  Perhaps the tall slash pine trees are drinking all the water for themselves.  "Selfish jerks!" I thought to myself.

My dead leather fern.

Just as I was about to finish my watering session, the birds suddenly got very chatty and actually began to swoop around my head like little daredevils!  Birds like cardinals and titmouses would alight on fenceposts and trees, landing so close that they were in arm's reach!  As I stood there, enjoying the chattering and singing, I watched as various woodpeckers started foraging on the tree trunks.  I saw red cockaded woodpeckers, hairy woodpeckers and a few more to boot!

I ran back inside to get the camera, and not taking the time to get the 300mm telephoto zoom lens, I stuck with the default lens instead.  Here's what I saw!

Female Red Cardinal

Brown Headed Nuthatch

Tufted Titmouse

All the birds would all come and forage in a loose flock, converging upon the garden after I drenched it with water.  Cardinals hunted in the undergrowth, the different species of nuthatch, flitted about the treetops, and woodpeckers took to the trunks.  At one point, a nuthatch chatted at me, but stopped when it heard another one sound an alarm.  In fact, all the birds got really quiet, and my nuthatch hid in a bottlebrush.

All of a sudden, a big slate gray colored bird of prey zipped by, perching only a stone's throw from me!  I think it was a merlin, though it could have been a peregrine falcon.  In any case, all the birds communicated with each other to avoid the threat of a predator.  Too cool.