Not quite ready for my close-up

I swung by Mom and Dad's today to drop off a couple of things I'd picked up for them while grocery shopping, and arrived just in time to be invited to stay for lunch. Completely unintentional on my part—honest. While I was there a trio of Cardinals came in and hung out in the blue spruce for a while: a male, a female, and a juvenile male. While I wasn't able to get a good shot of the female, I did manage to snag a few of the boys—although if birds could feel vanity, they'd probably be wishing I hadn't.

In the case of the young male, the transition to his adult plumage has resulted in a very patchwork appearance; I think my favorite part is the pair of lonely feathers trying valiantly to look like a crest:





From the front, the adult male actually seems just fine:



When seen from the side, though, he starts to look as if someone did a very clumsy job using the Photoshop eraser tool around his head:



And from the back, you can see that he in fact still hasn't quite recovered from his summer molt:



Of course, I didn't dare leave the house without a picture of Kaylee. But she too wasn't quite looking her best—her left eye was sore and a bit red, and because of the ointment my folks put in it also looked rather... goopy. So she asked that I only photograph her in profile today. Naturally, I was happy to oblige: