January 3, 2025
Finally, we have winter! The forecast for the next couple of weeks is for lovely wintery temperatures.
Yesterday we blew and shovelled our way out from under about 6 inches of wet, sticky snow that fell on New Year's Day. Waiting a day proved to be wise, as wet sticky stuff turns fluffy as temperatures drop, which they were supposed to do, and did. The snow was much easier to blow. This morning has dawned with clear skies, beautiful sunshine and a crisp breeze...-9C (16 F). Sunshine has been sorely lacking for the past couple of weeks, and with temperatures fluctuating just above and just below freezing, not ideal December weather, although Christmas morning was sunny for a couple of hours.
Rain after Christmas turned everything into an ice rink, and packed down the snow that we did have. Thankfully it didn't all disappear, and now we have a lovely new layer of snow. The snowshoes are out!
Deer have been moving through the area. There are lots of tracks around the yard, most heading to wherever anything remotely edible is poking up out of the snow. They have been pawing away at the top of my parsnip patch...must be disappointing for them to encounter a mesh of hardware cloth preventing them from reaching the edibles! There are a couple of pyramidal cedars in front of the verandah, and the deer got up enough nerve, or were hungry enough, to come and sample them. We've since wrapped the tree that was getting hit the hardest, in bird seed bags for protection.
On Christmas morning, we heard honest to goodness wolf howls, not just coyote yips, as the canines are following the deer down to the deer yard. This fellow came past a trail camera.
We believe we also have a pair of foxes, as their tracks are daily scouting the yard and around the buildings. We happened to see one of them in the yard one day, and watched as it pounced, cat-like, on something he/she heard under the snow, then proceeded to crouch down and eat the catch. I'm hoping it was one of those pesky voles!
There was a flock of American goldfinches in their winter duds, around the feeders one day recently, and we've seen the Evening Grosbeaks a couple of times, but our usual visitors are Blue Jays, White-breasted Nuthatches, Hairy Woodpeckers, and my favourite little friends...Chickadees.
The Barred Owl has visited Bird Cam, but didn't give us his best side...
but have to ration them, as homemade ones disappear so much more quickly than store bought ones. One wonders what they put in them???
