Hello to everyone on this fine, sunny Thursday! It was still a bit chilly this morning with a temperature of 30F (-1C) and a heavy frost covering everything. But it will be a nicer day, with sunshine at least for this morning. Yesterday the temp stayed at 32F (0C) all day. It was cold. Today, and the next 4 days, should be nice and mild with temperatures around 50F (10C).

Okay, that is not really “mild” in one sense, but considering what we had, it really is quite nice. The raccoons were around last night and made a bit of a mess out there on the deck. They knocked things over, very loudly, but fortunately it was just before I went to bed, so that was not a problem. At least they did not break anything. They were so loud, however, that I thought the bear had returned.

I am glad it was just the raccoons. The bears have not been around for some time now, so maybe they have gone into hibernation now. I hope so. I want to get my new feeder poles up and begin using the new feeders so the little birds have a better chance of getting at the food. Chester, Cherry and Ned all came to the cup of seeds when I went out there this morning.

Perhaps it is time to try attracting them to my hand. The three purple finches have come back again and there are now 2 juncos. There are a dozen evening grosbeaks, down from 20 a week ago. There were between 15 and 20 chickadees out here this morning. They can be very hard to count since they do not all come at the same time.

It is late autumn now. Trees and plants have gone dormant. The landscape is brown. We have a 5 day reprieve in temperatures, then it is back to cold once more. GPS, the last chipmunk, did not show up yesterday. I wonder if he will come back out for the next few days. All the other chipmunks have gone to bed in their little homes.

They do not truly hibernate but do sleep most of the time. But they get up and eat throughout the winter. Which is why they spend the summer stocking up on food for the winter months. Muffin kind of does the same thing, except she expects me to stock up on the food supplies. Hmm. Oh well, time to say goodbye for now. Have a wonderful day everyone and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2022 Steve McLeod.