Steve`s Country
For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
Morning Coffee Time #57.
Good morning and Happy Friday everyone! The coffee is ready, tea also, so help yourselves once again! Muffin is sitting here waiting to greet all of you. The birds are busy at the feeders, lots of chickadees this morning, plus the nuthatches and redpolls. Woodpeckers keep coming, taking turns at the suet feeders. But so far I haven’t seen any blue jays. A strong southwest wind caused the temperature to rise overnight to 32F (0C) right now, but that is our high for the day as well. The wind is supposed to change to the northwest today and drop that temp to 0F (-18C) by tonight. Then it will be a cold weekend, but warming up again next week.
But, we’re heading into March and that means that spring is in sight. Sort of anyway. Might have to use binoculars to see it yet, but it’s coming. March is a very unpredictable month. It’s generally our snowiest month of the year. Temperatures can be very up and down. There can be terrible blizzards. It can also be very nice, mild and produce an early spring for us. And some of our summer birds actually start to return in March. Canada geese and herring gulls are usually among the first to come back. Also bald eagles, but that’s a little harder to tell since we have those eagles here all winter. This has been a good winter for numbers of eagles, those with full adult plumage and those who still have their immature plumage.
And there is certainly a lot of common goldeneye ducks this winter and apparently there is also one hooded merganser around, but he stays on a different part of the river so I haven’t been able to see him. There are also at least 3 Barrow’s goldeneye ducks as well, all female, that I see regularly at the river. Usually mild winters will produce several different duck species overwintering here on the river, but not so this year which is a bit odd. Goldeneyes are definitely our winter duck though and it’s always nice to see them throughout the winter months. I think it’s time for some warmer weather pictures again today, so some summer scenery from some smaller lakes east of town. I hope you have a wonderful day and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2021 Steve McLeod.
Steve’s Bird Of The Day #21.
Hello everyone! Today we have the purple finch, showing the male in both of these pics. This is one of those unexplained oddities, it’s called a purple finch but guide books always refer to it as being red, or dull red. That’s because it is red. Some say raspberry red which matches it quite nicely. They are a sparrow sized finch which breeds across Canad in forested regions and winters from the southern part of it’s breeding range in the east to the gulf coast. They are easily attracted to feeders and have a nice warbling type of song. They seem to mostly travel in loose flocks and even nest close together. They don’t generally stay here in winter, but last winter I had 37 of them at my feeder, an amazing number for winter, this year there is none. Have a wonderful day and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2021 Steve McLeod.
