Winter Diner

Winter has arrived early this season, so our pumpkin’s got a snow hat and there’s been a food fight at the feeder for the past week.  I’m glad to see our winter friends return, with pointy heads, cornrows, and beaks long and short, sharp and puckered.   It’s a veritable fashion show of feathers: red, white, grey, brown, golden, blue, spotted, striped, flushed, fuzzy, in jackets, masks, wing amulets and long underwear. 

The chickadees break my heart in the morning.  Little but full of spunk, they scold until I trudge out in my snow boots and bathrobe to fill the feeder.  Once in awhile, one will alight on the railing nearby as I pour the seeds, scolding that she’d been up for hours by the time I manage to get up and bear the icy wind.

Once I am safely out of sight they visit and nosh all day long, swooping in and out, chattering up a storm.  Here’s the list so far this winter:  titmice, chickadees, red-bellied woodpeckers, downy woodpeckers, finches gold and red, song sparrows, cardinal, blue jay, nuthatches, doves, carolina wren, and the unrelenting gang of juncos who have actually evolved at our feeder.  Juncos are by nature ground foragers who search under bushes, doing a scratch and sniff dance to find food.  But with much practice and trial and error, one of them developed the ability to fly up to the swaying feeder and land properly on it to eat.  Within days the others followed suit.  The junco gang is the first to arrive in the winter on our deck, and they undoubtedly alert the others that our diner has opened for the season.  I am glad to serve them.

It's All New Again

This one’s been a particularly long winter, with cold winds right up through the first week of April.  Even the daffodils, crocuses and forsythia have been keeping their buds squeezed tight, shy about blooming until today, our first day of 70 degrees.  So, here’s the First-Real-Day-Of-Spring report:

The trees are still bare, so I can see birds flitting about.  It’s going to be a sudden warm-up into the high 70’s to 80’s this entire week, and the migrators should be arriving soon.  I’ll have to get out and see what colorful return-ees from the tropics I can spot before the trees start to leaf out.

Today’s wildlife count: 

On a short walk along Valley Creek I see: about 20 trout facing upstream, swaying back and forth and waiting for bugs to come their way, one great blue heron standing like a statue on the opposite bank - also staring at said fish, 3 deer drinking, then startled, running up the bank across the trail in front of me, stopping twice to stare, and 2 young garter snakes, slithering through the leaf litter and wild flowers, one chasing the other Bambi-style, towards the sunny trail and creek below. 

There is lots of bird song for accompaniment, and much rushing and gurgling of the creek water, so it was a full sensorial experience for which I am grateful.  It could not have arrived at a better time, as those of us who live amidst the changing seasons really do get grumpy every winter, and are so grateful for the slightest signs of growth and color breaking through. 

What amazes me is the amnesia that happens every year.  We truly do forget what is to come, the details of the progression of things, and the miracle of the beauty, until it is upon us again out of the cold grayness of winter.  First, the buds appear on the trees and bushes, then one of their flowers blooms here and there, and then in a day or so the explosion of color, in pink, magenta, or yellow on gray bark, finally followed by the green leaves that fill in all the empty spaces. It's all a distant memory of an old promise, now being fulfilled.