A single shade of gray

Redpolls did crowd a feeder one day.

A strange pale has fallen across the neighborhood since the return from the East Pole. The sky has been mostly undefined gray and temperatures for a while dropped to near zero. A brief snowfall combined with the cold has coated the trees in a latticework of white. The sun rises and sets behind the mountain still so there is no direct sunlight even as the hours of daylight grow longer by about six minutes a day.

The bird feeders ran out during the absence and there have been very few birds around since I returned and those that do show up have done so on an unusual schedule. They mostly arrive and feed in late afternoon and not many, just a few chickadees and nuthatches. I did see a hairy woodpecker one day and twice about a dozen redpolls came by, but for the most part they have been ignoring my yard. Every morning I go to the windows as soon as there is light to look for birds, but almost every morning no birds are flying around, not even as simple movement among the dense tree branches farther out in the yard. During past Januarys and cold spells they usually worked the feeders all day long and I had to fill them almost daily. I filled them when I first got here and since then have only had to add about half to fill them again and that only once.

One reason may be an aggressive squirrel that I have seen charge at the birds on the ground to chase them away. I saw one up on a feeder one day also, so I let that one go empty and left it that way for a few days. The neighbor's almost feral cat has left tracks all over the yard. too, though there has been no sign it actually caught a bird, at least not yet.

More redpolls.

So you add the gray atmosphere and the lack of birds to the general malaise that accompanies re-entry from an extended adventure and it's fairly easy to imagine the mood around here these days. I stayed at the cabin long enough to be living there. I read years ago that moving residence is one of the five most stressful events in people's lives – leaving the East Pole after a month almost qualifies as a move.

The sun should emerge from behind the mountain any day now, so perhaps things will brighten then and maybe it will bring the birds with it. The East Pole also stands on the north side of a hill and doesn't get sun for a while in winter. Out there I know January 14 is the sun day the first day of the year direct sunlight hits the cabin. That's a date always easy to remember because it is also my son's birthday, another form of son day, if you will. And, to top it off, he was born on a Sunday. As I recall the sun shows up here around the same time so perhaps if the gray ever lifts some sun will shine on this life again and then we can look forward to that first warm kiss of light on a cold cheek that comes as rays from the sun begin to carry some heat with them in February.