After re-fixing the toilet that I thought I'd fixed yesterday—the seal was not yet sealed properly—I rewarded what smelled like success with a mission to the Blue-Dot trail near Wyassup Lake to see if there was any sign of those Snipe, er, Hepaticas. The fictional heroes of my youth, Spin and Marty, were sent on Snipe hunts to find birds that supposedly didn't exist. I've actually seen Wilson's Snipe in wetlands, but the birds are hard to spot, so I guess that accounts for their mythical quality. But the Hepatica? Well, not yet. And not today either. I did, however, document a common bird whose presence I was beginning to doubt. The Eastern Phoebe is a plucky, nondescript songbird that, because it doesn't migrate all that far south for the winter—it tends to hang out in the Southeast—is one of the first returnees, often arriving with the equinox. It makes its presence known with its "song": a raspy and frequent repetition of its "fee-bee" name. No surprise, really—the birds were late this year. Ah, better late than never: here they are, captured with the Sigma supertelephoto... and much welcomed back.