Hawk in a Spruce.

10-17-25 SHORT HILLS: The first Nor’easter has come and gone. We got a bit more than an inch of rain with some gusty wind that brought down a few branches, but was no problem for us. The coastal areas had flooding and damage. Slowly we are getting cooler, but no frost in site.

The parts for the dyer repair have arrived, and it is being fixed as I write, but not usable til next week. The water sprinklers have been shut down for the season.

We had dinner with Trina and Jeffrey earlier in the week. 

As I drive around on errands, I see the fall color is getting pretty good in NJ. The exciting thing here was this afternoon, I sat down on the porch to watch the feeders and saw something white on top of a spruce tree across the street. The tree is about a hundred yards away. When I zoomed in, the white thing was a hawk. After a ton of pix, it flew away, revealing a red tail.   

 

The burning bushes know how to say red.

Zooming in on the tree top showed a hawk.

More zoom, more hawk.

When the hawk left the spruce, in the middle of the shot, the tail shows red, making this a Red-tailed hawk. The most common hawk we see. All the song birds were in hiding until the hawk left.

A pair of house finches, male on the left and female on the right, in their winter clothes.

There's a lot of berries in the fall, food for the birds to find on their own. These are beauty berries, in vivid purple.