Good morning to all of you on this fine day! It is another cold day out there. Seems like I have been saying that nearly every day this year. That is probably because it has been cold nearly every day. It just should not be so cold this late in February. It is unusual. Though it does happen sometimes. But at least there is no snow in the forecast for this week. That is certainly nice. And by Saturday it should start warming up a bit. That does not mean warm, just warmer than it is.

And even the first week of March is looking good. March. That is the month I start thinking of spring. That does not mean that spring will arrive in March, even though the calendar says it does. But at least spring is close once we enter March. Jasper was out here bright and early this morning. Sitting on the main bird feeder eating sunflower seeds. So I had to go out and remind him that the lower feeder is for him, the tall one is for the birds. And it is a cold morning. And the birds were waiting to eat.

He did not seem to like my reasoning. But he did move. Reluctantly. There were lots of peanuts for him too. But at times he really likes those sunflower seeds even though they are so tiny. Guess he likes a change in diet now and then. Yesterday there were quite a few grosbeaks again, mostly the evening grosbeaks, but there were half a dozen pine grosbeaks too. This morning there were 2 evening grosbeaks, but they did not stay, and no pine grosbeaks. But there is lots of the smaller birds, though even the redpolls are down to just 37 birds now.

Quite a difference from the nearly 200 that were around before. That could be an early sign of spring though. I hope. Spring. Such a nice word. I really do start to dream of nicer weather this time of the year. And I start looking at my summer pictures a lot more. I never realized how many photos I actually have now. Makes me wish I had sorted them better right from the beginning. I have begun the sorting process, but it is going to take a long time to get it done.

The last 15 minutes that I have been writing I noticed something outside. That is, there is nothing outside to notice. I had to get up and look. There is nothing out there, not a bird in sight. That is not right. It is a cold morning. There should be dozens of little birds out there now. Not one. Finally I saw two birds, a chickadee and a nuthatch. They each took a seed and left. Gone. That shrike must be around again. But if he is, he is certainly out there a long time.

I could not see him anywhere, but he can hide himself good in the tops of the trees. That shrike is around too much this winter. Normally I would have a dozen or more blue jays and they kept the shrike away. Blue jays hate shrikes. But this winter there has only been 2 blue jays and they are not around much. Oh well. There is still nothing out there. I need to make more suet cakes today too. Thank you for reading my chatter today. Have a wonderful day everyone and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2022 Steve McLeod.