It's shaping up to be a very strange winter, indeed. Here it is December 15 and it's raining with a temperature of 42 F – ABOVE! The yard has very little snow, what there is clings to shadows. Ice covers much of the area where it has been packed a little and in the low spots, open water.
I had planned to go out for Christmas and/or New Year's but there is no snow at the East Pole either and given the rain, the trail would be a total mess, not to mention the possibility of getting in there with a four-wheeler and having a huge snow dump, trapping man and machine there at least until some people ran over the trial and I could hike out.
These are the dark days anyway, made worse by mostly overcast gray skies that allow little sunlight to sneak through. All of it does little to enhance any joy in life.
And, in all this, some strange behaviors. Among other things, there are bright red tomatoes on the plant standing in the window next to the kitchen table.
First of all there hasn't been a single redpoll visit this winter so far. Outside feeding birds today they showed some different behavior. I have often had chickadees land on a feeder I was filling and once one even landed on my shoulder. But the grosbeaks being the spookiest of the bunch usually disappear at any sign of anything unusual and possibly threatening. Today, though, while I was filling one feeder a grosbeak landed on the one right next to it. And when I looked down two of them were grazing through the spilled seed on the ground at my feet. Very unusual. But the biggest surprise was yet to come.
As I was picking my way carefully across a patch of ice I happened to look at the lilac bush, protected from moose for the winter by a circle of wire fencing. I had to look twice and then go in closer, but sure enough, there were several green leaf buds on the branches, in December, in Alaska. What?
No comments:
Post a Comment