Today's tale of woe is how hard it is to get good photographs of birds. Here's example one:

This morning, I look out and see a flicker putting divots in my neighbor's yard. A good photo op, I say to myself, for a bird I've found difficult to photograph. The only problem -- and there's always some such problem -- is that there's a fence in the way. So I creep, creep, creep forward, hoping to get far enough up that I can get a photo over the fence. Unfortunately, I need to get pretty close, and just when I get close enough, the bird startles and flies off.

Here's example two, a black-throated green warbler (I think):

Birds in trees are always tough.