Good morning on this very chilly Monday! We are very much below our normal temperature for this time of the year. It is 18F (-8C) this morning, but feels much colder due to the strong north wind. It is also cloudy with some light snow, and because of all the rain we had on the weekend, everything is covered with a layer of ice right now. It is treacherous just walking out on the deck this morning. Fortunately I was expecting it this time so no mishaps happened which is nice.

But, warmer weather is coming by the end of the week. Hopefully. Though it is rather hard to trust weather forecasts at times. The snow has now hardened into solid ice once again and it will take a lot to get it melting. We will have snow on the ground into May this year. Skamper and Coffee, two more of my chipmunks woke up over the weekend and came for peanuts. But because of the rain I wasn’t able to spend time outside with them, except briefly yesterday.

Nice to see that the chipmunks are starting to wake up and come around again. I did not see Pocket though, and he was out earlier until our last snowstorm hit. Hopefully he will come back out again soon too. I hope all the others survived too. I know they would not have starved over the winter anyway. Not with all the peanuts they got from me last year! I am glad the bears are not coming around yet anyway, that would be a problem since I cannot stop feeding the birds just yet until warmer weather returns and stays with us.

Hopefully bears will not be such a problem during the day like they were last year. I don’t care if they come around at night, but during the day is just no fun at all. I like to spend time out on my deck if the weather is nice. And go walking, once the snow and ice is gone from the path to the river. It might have to dry a bit too. With all the melting snow, and now this latest 2 inches (50mm) of rain, there is one area of that path that will be under water too deep to walk through without getting rather wet.

Oh well. Minor details. Still lots of redpolls around, somewhere about 100 or more, same with the juncos. There are more evening grosbeaks now too, around 40 of them, and a dozen grackles. Still just my one fox sparrow. Plus chickadees, nuthatches, hairy and downy woodpeckers. And of course my gulls. Jasper and Jasmine come around regularly, so does Chase when he gets the chance. That Cooper’s hawk still comes too, several times a day. Well, time for me to head out for some shopping. Thank you for reading today, hope you have a marvelous Monday and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2022 Steve McLeod.