Too Early Winter

It warmed up enough for icicles to drip near the back entry and from the front porch roof.

Teasel gobbled her "tea" and finished up for those who were hesitating. She is now sleeping off her excesses, opening a bleary blue eye when I suggested that she has over-eaten and considerably "stretched" her stripes.

The Flicker's tree

Juncos bouncing under the bird feeder.


This one has a pink-gold blush on the sides which suggests it is an Oregon Junco. We may also have the "slate-colored" race here or variants of the two groups.

Dirty icicles still hang from the truck, which has been inside the garage since our return on Friday afternoon. The running boards are treacherously ice-covered.

I hung out towels on the porch line, had to put them in the dryer to finish.

The cats have become bored with the misty landscape beyond the windows and decided in the wee hours of Friday morning to do some landscaping of their own. Prime suspects are the kittens, Jemima and Chester, probably encouraged by their father, Charlie.

Another morning wrapped in grey snow clouds. A half-hearted sun struggled through for a few hours then gave up and retreated. There has been no wind today, but it is raw with a penetrating chill more suitable for January.

The juncos have come early to the feeder. We haven't usually seen them until later in the season. These bouncy small birds have the common name "snow birds." They are in the general classification of "Dark-Eyed Juncos" and may be a variant of the Oregon Junco. Several of them flew against the dining room picture window yesterday leaving tiny imprints of feathers, and one fell to the ground its neck broken. I moved it this morning, feeling a bit sad at that loss of cheerful life. I'm sure had it been a starling I wouldn't have spared a moment's grief.

A flicker landed on the log wall of the garage, braced itself and whanged its long black beak against the wood, but flew off when I inched my way through the mud with my camera. I have been seeing a crowd of long-billed mottled birds which wouldn't stay still long enough for me to get a good look. Grandson D. came in this afternoon and announced that they are the flicker's "babies"--mottled adolescents. He has just returned to say that the flickers are lodging in the dead tree at the far side of the small pasture where the irrigation ditch loops. As we watched the bobbing and pecking of the juncos a pair of Mallards coasted toward the pond. At the last moment they noticed the skum of ice coating most of surface, wheeled around the open end and landed with a splash in the cold water.

As dusk creeps in, a few flakes of snow are twirling gently on the moving air, the tops of the foothills are disappearing in a wrap of cloud-cloaked white. The nearer landscape is an expanse of snow, save along the ditches where mud and spent brown grasses weave a wide swath. Against this monochrome the trees stand out, broken branches hanging, in a dry rustle of green, dull gold and bronze.

There are good pictures of several "races" of juncos in the slide-show at this link.

http://www.flashbax.com/slide_shows/dark_eyed_juncos/dark_eyed_juncos.html