Building projects

The train, passing by a mile across the field, sounds as if it were driving right through the living room: a nasty east wind has been blowing all day. It has been bending the tall spruce towering over the highest poplar in the bush across the house, whipped the horses’ tails between their legs when they ventured out to the unprotected hill to the south, even tousled the feathers on the heads of the crows pecking by the side of the road. It is a cold wind, too, an unpleasant change from the gentle spring breeze that caressed our faces only a couple of days ago when we had tea on the deck in the afternoon.

What can I say - it is April, after all, known for its unpredictable weather changes. Still, is it really necessary to have a November day more than a month after the spring equinox? The sky, milky white and foreboding, suggests that the newest forecast might well be true: more snow is expected as early as tonight, as much as ten centimetres. This time, however, it will fall on bare ground and likely not stay around so long. Sure, some small remnants of the mighty snow banks are still left, ragged and dirty, along the north side of the tree lines or in a ditch hardly touched by the sun’s rays, but as of today even our magnificent snowman is a thing of the past, and soon the somewhat greener area of the lawn will be the only indication that a giant was keeping watch here once. For a few warm days it melted right before our eyes, hollows and bumps appearing where none had been before, losing first one dead-tree arm, then the other. Then, only an armful of snow left, the process almost came to a standstill yesterday when temperatures didn’t rise above +4. This morning I could have held the remaining snow in my two hands, and there is no more speculation as to who the winner of the bet will be. It turns out that the seemingly overly optimistic estimate of April 22^nd was not that far out after all, and with names on every day from the 25^th to the 2^nd of May it was a tight race till the end. 

The birds are not concerned with weather forecasts: they are getting ready to raise families. This morning at breakfast I watched the flurry of activity at the bird feeder. Normally at this time of year it has been taken down already, but there is still some ‘wild bird seed’ left, those tiny grains usually spurned in favour of sunflower seeds by the chickadees and blue jays, and I am waiting for juncos, redpolls, nuthatches, even the odd hairy or downy woodpecker to clean it up. Yesterday a flash of bright yellow caught my eye: a solitary evening grosbeak, such a rare guest these last few years, had come for a visit – what a beautiful surprise!

This morning there was a steady back-and-forth of the regulars at the feeder while the robins hopped around on the lawn. Suddenly a drama on the roof of the feeder: the hairy woodpecker, intent on splitting open a kernel, got very excited at the approach of a starling and went after it with beak and claws. The starling was not to be deterred, however, and stood its ground, advancing on the woodpecker with spread wings, verbally attacking its adversary. Insulted, maybe, the woodpecker left, and the victorious starling entered the bird feeder. 

The feed, however, was the last thing on his mind: he was checking the site out for its nesting suitability, clinging to the ceiling for moments on end. His mate flew in from a nearby poplar tree where she had been waiting for him to create safe passage for her, and for a little while they conversed on the roof of the feeder, he repeating the ceiling-and-wall testing procedure a couple of times, their beautiful iridescent blue-green feathers speckled with tiny white dots. I saw the male’s orange beak open and close, and sliding the window open a crack I could hear his song. In the end, they must have decided against this location after all – wisely, I must say, because I don’t plan to leave it there much longer, and there are many old or dead poplars in the bush that must be much more suitable for their purpose.

I watched another bird couple, this one not interested at all in the feeder: two magpies stalked back and forth on the lawn in serious conversation, heads nodding, one’s long tail feathers raised, the other’s standing straight out. Just a little while ago, the afternoon drawing to a close, I noticed movement close to the centre of the big pine outside the kitchen window. Chickadees, robins and chipping sparrows are darting in and out of there all the time, and I imagine that there are several nests every year. This swaying of branches, however, was not caused by those small birds; it was much too pronounced for one of them. It wasn’t long until I had traced the movement to the two magpies, busy at work on a branch about two metres above the ground, close to the trunk. They each had dragged a dry twig in there and were busy positioning them to build the foundation for their nest. 

I was less than pleased: did I really want magpies to nest in that tree? So close to the house, with all the racket that was going to ensue once their babies hedged and started to fly? Magpies have a reputation, too, to eat eggs and fledglings of song birds – maybe I should go out and shoo them away! I must say I was tempted for those very reasons, but then I thought, what right do I have to get involved? What makes me privileged to pass judgment on these birds, when, to be truthful, I had to admire them for even attempting to build in such a tight spot? 

I watched them hop up to their chosen nest site, branch by branch, like climbing a spiral staircase, their bulky nesting material making it even more difficult to navigate the inner labyrinth of the tree, and decided to let them be. The chickadees and nuthatches didn’t seem concerned – there is so much room to breed around here – and maybe the presence of the magpies will prevent the yellow-bellied sapsucker from boring holes in the bark of the pine this year. 

I will watch and learn more about the behaviour of these smart birds with their beautiful plumage – and hopefully not at some point curse the moment I didn’t interfere.

Promise

After the snow storm, the snowman

It’s been a week since the snow storm, and roads have long returned to a driveable state, although the gravel roads are still soft and rutted. The last few days were much warmer, and big puddles have replaced snow in many spots.

Still, there is a fair bit left even now, and of course there was much more on Easter Sunday when a group of family and friends gathered at our house. The sun was shining brightly in the afternoon, and it was warm enough to sit out on the deck on the west side of the house – a bit like sitting on an island, surrounded by a sea of white.

The under-thirty crowd soon decided the snow was perfect to build a snowman, and went to work with  much enthusiasm. It wasn’t long until tracks from the rolled-up snow criss-crossed the lawn, some almost, though not quite, laying bare the tan grass underneath. Roll after roll of sticky snow was added to the ever-growing pile which, for a long time, looked rather formless. What would it be in the end? A tower? A pyramid? Just a big ugly lump of snow? More volunteers joined the effort, and the assembly line was perfected: there now were 'roll starters’ - female, and partly a bit older - who passed on their product to one of the strong young project initiators. Like the snowball, the crew of snow pushers necessary to manoeuvre the building blocks kept growing. Three guys, three pairs of arms and legs gave their all to move the snow rolls to the building site, then, in one huge last effort, muscles straining under the weight, one roll after the other was lifted up with a 'one-two-THREE!'

Finally the construction was deemed high enough. Now it became clear that the mass of snow was not intended to become a pyramid at all: this was going to be a bona fide snow giant! The shaping of the body and the head was not an easy thing to do: the whole thing was about twelve feet high, after all, and steps had to be fashioned on the backside so that the sculptors had a foothold. With much good advice it took shape. Rocks had to be found for the eyes and the mouth, a carrot for the nose, and the horses’ 20-l water pail was deemed to be the perfect hat. Never before had a snowman even close to its size taken up residence on our lawn!

Now, of course, the big question is: how long will it last? Later, when we had moved back inside for coffee and cake, bets were taken and written down for the date of its final demise. Estimates range from very optimistic (April 22^nd) to very gloomy (May 18^th), with a cluster right around the end of April/beginning of May.

So far, although the lawn has lost much of its snow cover, the snow giant is holding fast. Its shoulders are sagging a bit, and it has bumps and cavities where none were before, but its dead-tree arms are still raised in a benevolent gesture, almost like a blessing.

More snow!

Weather forecasts are notoriously unreliable here – maybe everywhere? – but that doesn’t deter the average Canadian from checking them often, seemingly placing enough faith in them to not give up hope that, some day, they might actually be right.

They can be, of course, and when it comes to extreme weather they seem to be more often than not. The winter storm watch posted on Tuesday and upheld on Wednesday, so unlikely on days where the snow vanished almost before my eyes, stubbornly refused to disappear from the weather map. On Wednesday afternoon I hung a load of laundry outside, the snow under my feet whispering with that grainy sound it only makes in the last stage of its life, made porous and hollow by the sun.

The moon, that night, so close to being full, was fuzzy, and the stars not as bright as they should have been – the first indication that things were about to change. “Five to ten centimetres over night”, said the weatherman on the radio, “and another ten centimetres possible before the system moves out Thursday afternoon.” Well, it might not happen – right? Or it might happen somewhere else, possibly: there were, after all, areas further east that hadn’t received any of Sunday’s snowfall, where farmers would rejoice if their cracked soil was covered with a nice white blanket.

It was not to be. When I woke up yesterday morning the trees were obscured by thick snowflakes; I could see that much from my bed already. Even with the prior warning, however, I was unprepared for the view that presented itself when I got up: more than twenty centimetres of snow had fallen already, and there was no sign that it was about to stop anytime soon. The announcement on the radio at 6:30  revealed several bus cancellations in counties bordering ours already, but our buses seemed to be running. This would be interesting!

Maya shouldered her bag at 7:45, pulled on her boots, and followed Leo up the driveway. As usual he was going to make sure that she got off okay. Ten minutes later they returned, Maya’s legs soaked from the onslaught of the wind-driven wet snow. The bus was nowhere to be seen. No wonder: roads still wet and muddy from the snowfall a few days ago were now covered with new snow; it was unlikely that the bus would be able to negotiate this mess. Soon came the bus driver’s call: trying to turn around after her first pickup she had almost got stuck, so she brought the boy back and drove home.

We had been planning to attend a 60^th birthday celebration about an hour's drive east of here but were unwilling to put ourselves in harm’s way: area highways were treacherous and visibility very poor. Even in Edmonton the snow was wreaking havoc, power outages along the city’s major commuter routes putting traffic lights out of order at rush hour time – not a pretty situation. 

We decided to wait until it stopped snowing before we attempted to go anywhere. By eleven-thirty, finally, snowflakes thin and sparse now, thirty-two centimetres of new snow on the ground, we slowly made our way out of the driveway with the four-wheel drive pickup – no use trying to make it with the small car. One set of tracks transected the white band of the road, the snow pushed up in ridges on both sides. They looked like the tracks of a small car, too, the snow showing the telltale scraping of a car’s belly. Our amazement that the car got through snow this deep did not last long, however. Coming over the hill we could see a dark mass in the distance: the car, stopped in the middle of the road with a raised hood. The driver, a bit abashed, told us the car had overheated in his attempt to make it through. He declined our offer to assist him in some way, and we ploughed through the now pristine snow for almost two miles more until we reached the highway.

We had no trouble, though it certainly was not very nice driving for the first forty miles or so. I felt sorry, too, for the birds who had so optimistically returned to their summer homes: small groups of geese flying overhead had trouble staying the course in the strong winds, and hawks were sitting, wet and bedraggled, on fence posts while their meal, the mice, were undoubtedly unwilling to tunnel out into the open through a foot of snow.

About half way to our destination the roads were bare, and fields nearly so: again it was our immediate area that had borne the brunt of the wintry assault. Our hopes of getting into the fields early will not be fulfilled, that much is clear already. Again, too, we will have to manoeuvre around water holes, which is always a nuisance. On the other hand, this unrequested late snow might mean the difference between good and poor crop emergence, so we will not complain too loudly.

During the afternoon the sky had cleared, and the setting sun was in my eyes on the way home. A golden glow lay on the snow and on melt water lakes that had formed in many depressions already, the wind had calmed down, and once again geese were walking in pairs along the water’s edge, or even went for an evening swim.

It might not have been the last snow of the season, but it is not so bad anymore: these are spring storms now, and even today the foot of snow has been reduced by about half already. For me, it means I can watch juncos cluster at the feeder at breakfast time, enjoying these pretty transitory visitors with their neat dark and light grey plumage and their bright little beaks. They are joined by the flock of redpolls that has frequented the feeder for the second half of the winter, but the chickadees must be busy with other matters: I can hear them trill their spring song in the bush.

Coming home

It’s not that I hadn’t been warned – a photo attached to an email Sunday night fully sufficed to do so –but how do you prepare yourself for the return to a season you had foolishly expected not to think about for the next seven months or so?

When I landed in Calgary yesterday afternoon the sky was blue, and a mild breeze lifted my hair on the way to the small plane that was to take me to Edmonton – a most beautiful Alberta spring day! To my surprise, things didn’t look and feel much different once I stepped out of the plane 45 minutes later: Edmonton, too, was in spring mode. How nice to hear the hoarse call of the gulls again, to watch their graceful white bodies dance overhead!

My hope that the fifteen centimeters of snow that fell at home on Sunday would be melted was in vain, of course: the further north we got, the whiter the world became. The gravel road was an unattractive mix of mud and slush, but it was quite passable, at least – better than the day before, I’m sure.

Still, spring is not as far away as it appears at first sight. This morning, a soft twitter of bird voices greeted me, voices that hadn’t been there when I left two and a half weeks ago. Dark-eyed Juncos kept the chickadees company at the bird feeder, and three starlings landed on its roof, discussing, it seemed, if they should partake in the feast as well. Their song filled the early morning air, and while it is not as melodious as the robins' it is a beautiful song, nevertheless.

Geese, too, are on the move, little groups of them flying north, and several hawks are back as well. They might ask themselves what made them leave their winter quarters to come back to this, but, like me, they know that it won't last much longer - even if the next winter storm watch is a prominent feature in the weather forecast already!

When it's spring time in Alberta ....