While I have a big project restoring posts from 2016 – more about that later – I may as well get caught up a bit with the morning walks in November before the month is gone. These are a few observations from the Chicago Portage on November 4, 6 and 13.

There were still plenty of leaves on the trees on November 4, and the colors were muted at best. But I like to see how this view from the bridge near Harlem changes over the seasons.

Dark-eyed Juncos had definitely arrived for the winter.

It was still possible to see Red-winged Blackbirds.

European Starlings were starting to gather in numbers.

Black-capped Chickadees are with us all year round.

A Downy Woodpecker took off.

A White-throated Sparrow posed nicely.

On November 6, I first saw an American Goldfinch.

Then I encountered the Golden-crowned Kinglet at the top of the post.

The only other bird I managed to photograph that morning was a backlit White-breasted Nuthatch.

On November 13, this American Robin made me smile.

I took photos of some far-away birds and discovered later they were Rusty Blackbirds.

A couple Fox Sparrows showed up.

And a female Northern Cardinal negotiated the baring branches.

I am starting to see Fox Squirrels more this year. It seems to me that it’s been a while.

And the last bird I tried to see better was a distant American Tree Sparrow.

So now I am beginning to understand what happened to all those “Unattached” photos. They weren’t exactly unattached, but because I uploaded them all to my media library first and then put them into posts, they apparently assumed some kind of neither-here-nor-there and thus “unattached” limbo status. Suffice it to say that I enthusiastically removed way too many photos, rendering several posts from 2016 totally empty, except for a little text here and there. So my project is to locate the original attachments and replace them by uploading them directly into those posts using the newer software, of course, that I suspect caused this whole fiasco. I have determined what’s on my external hard drives. It’s sort of fun to revisit the photos, especially those I took in my more far-flung birding travels. After I’m done with reconstituting older posts, the space problem and the remaining unattached items will have to be addressed as well. A sobering thought, but maybe better to deal with during the winter months. Another good excuse for not writing my book.