What a nice feeling, 7pm and another painting is finished. I sat down with it at 7am and pretty much worked without stopping except to rearrange my studio furniture so I could have a better view out the window. There was an excellent migrant show going on all day which was pretty distracting but when you have a pond with a waterfall you just have to live with it. Especially in this drought, the birds come out of the woodwork to drink and bathe and chase each other around. Highlight, I think, was the vivid male Baltimore oriole standing in the waterfall shrugging water over his wings and back and getting cleaned up for the next leg of his flight. He was going business class, apparently, and didn’t fool around for very long. There was an ongoing circus of little warblers and I counted 9 yellow rumps, 6 Nashvilles, 8 Orangecrowneds, 2 black and whites (and a partridge in a pear tree…okay, that was silly but couldn’t be helped). Along with the warblers there were 2 warbling vireos, 11 chipping sparrows who bathed en masse in the shallows; 6 American goldfinches, 1 indigo bunting, and the usual suspects of the cardinals, field sparrows, titmice, chickadees, and so on. Hard to keep my eyes on my work and I kept my binoculars near at hand all day. Anyway, as I said, another painting finished- time for a glass of wine on the deck!