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| Late afternoon in February |
A month has gone by, and little seems to have changed: it is still winter, the snow pack, if anything, has increased, and within the last week we have had temperatures dip down to -30 while strong winds made it feel a lot colder. Just now, although it has warmed up to near the freezing mark, a veil of falling snow hides the far side of the field from view, and roads are likely to be in poor driving condition yet again.
Still: looking at the photo above, taken yesterday, something has changed. A month ago the late afternoon sun would not have cast these long shadows across the front lawn. By this time of day it would have set already, never reaching that point in the southwestern sky. The arch of its daily journey has widened, and it is climbing a little higher every day. Already we have gained more than an hour's worth of light since the shortest day, much of it in the evening, though it is noticeable in the mornings as well.
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| Pine Grosbeak |
One of the joys of this season, for me, is to watch the birds frequenting the bird feeder beside the deck. They seem to have two main meal times, because always around nine in the morning and three in the afternoon traffic is busiest. Chickadees, hairy and downy woodpeckers, white breasted nuthatches and blue jays are the faithful regulars, often joined by a flock of tiny redpolls with breast feathers in varying hues of red.
This year a junco is part of their crowd, which is unusual for two reasons. Most juncos pass through in the spring and fall and move on after two or three weeks; never have we had one stay all winter. This one not only is doing just that, but also looks a bit different from its cousins: instead of the slate grey upper part neatly contrasted by a light grey underside, it is of a warm hazelnut colour on top, set off with lighter brown fading into beige on the underside. I wonder if the redpolls have taken it into their fold.
It is always a treat to see another group of visitors alight on the bird house, a flash of colour more intense than the redpolls, and much larger: pine grosbeaks have been quite faithful in coming by more regularly this year than the last few, sometimes staying away for up to two weeks, but often joining the regular crowd for days on end. The males are quite spectacular in their red frocks, but I love the females, too: their mustard yellow head and tail feathers, their black markings contrast nicely with the grey body. They, like the redpolls, belong to the family of finches, their strong beaks perfect for chiseling open sunflower seeds right on the edge of the bird house.
Feeding habits of chickadees, blue jays and woodpeckers are quite different from each other: chickadees carry every little seed to a nearby bush or tree - in our it often is the cherry tree in front of the kitchen window - to eat it there, while blue jays stuff as much into their beaks as will possibly fit before moving on, and the woodpeckers sit in the bird feeder throwing seeds left and right with wide, sweeping movements of their beaks, looking for the perfect kernel.
One more rare guest made use of the readily set table the other day: a pileated woodpecker, so shy that we can rarely ever spot it in either summer or winter, though quite recognizable by its call, landed awkwardly on the roof of the feeder. It teetered there for a few moments, seemingly trying to figure out a way how to get on the inside from its precarious perch on the roof. It obviously was too difficult a task, because it finally took off again without having gleaned a single seed.
The road leading by our house will quite likely look like this a few more times this winter between ploughings, twin tracks disappearing in the distance, maybe we'll even be unable to get out for a day after a particularly nasty snowstorm, but there is a lot of beautiful winter weather to be enjoyed as well - and spring will surely come eventually.
