Good morning everyone! It is a beautiful sunny morning and milder than it has been once again. The temperature was -6F (-21C) this morning, but it is windy making it feel colder, down to -20F (-29C). The birds are busy with their breakfast though the grosbeaks have disappeared, which seems to be a normal thing these days, they always eat for a while then fly off somewhere and come back about an hour later. Perhaps they go off to visit another feeder in between.

Just as I type the grosbeaks have returned and are filling the feeder again with their bright colors of yellows, golds, black, white and red. I might try a little later to go out see if I can get a pine grosbeak onto my hand, and get a picture of it. That will depend on the wind however. I wouldn’t be able to stand out there with bare hands for very long in that wind. Right now the wind seems to be getting stronger, it was supposed to become lighter by early afternoon. Oh well.

Yesterday I went for a walk to the river again. It was cloudy when I left home, but it was not snowing at least. But, I was only a little ways down the path when the snowflakes started coming down and it was snowing quite a bit by the time I got to the half way point. Down at the river it was snowing quite heavily. So I did not get as many photos as I would have liked. But I am going to try again tomorrow if the weather is nice enough. The man with the snowmobile had gone over the path again so walking was easy enough, until the point where I cut off the main path and head down to the river.

There it is only a footpath, barely wide enough for one person. And only one person had been down there since we had all that snow. So the snow in that part of the path was about a foot (30cm) deep, which made for harder walking, especially coming back up that hill. It was impossible to get good traction for walking so I had to take small steps. I did not want to injure myself again. So it took longer to get back, but it was still a beautiful walk, so quiet and peaceful, only the sound of me walking and the snow falling among the trees.

I met two flocks of chickadees and nuthatches along the way home, the only other bird was a raven flying around. I met Scramble, my little squirrel friend, at our usual spot so I left him some peanuts. He came down quickly to get them and haul them off somewhere else. Perhaps he wanted them closer to where he actually lives. A red fox was out as well and followed me along the path for a while, but he stayed quite far back and would always hide when I got my camera out, so no pictures of him yesterday. Interestingly, the snow stopped about the same place it started when I began my walk. Have a great day everyone and God bless!

Steve and Muffin. (top featured image is part of the path to the river)

©2022 Steve McLeod.