We saw two spruce grouse today, out in the backyard, as it snowed, blew snow around, and generally was miserably cold out. The temps have gone up to mid-teens, so it's a bit warmer, but with the wind, doesn't feel it at all.
Earlier I wrote about seeing the saw-whet owl out on our spruce tree in the backyard. With all the voles and mice around, he had plenty of food for a few days. We also ended up with 15 mice in our house! We only know that because we had spotted one running around inside the bathtub, thus knowing they were in the house. So we set up mousetraps all over and caught a total of 11 right by the stove. Three in the crawl space. And one bather. I would have loved to have our owl enjoy those mice, but they chose a warmer place to die. And so - now it seems the vole and mouse population has tanked, and we are seeing no owl. However, there are still a lot of white snowshoe hares out there, plus our beautiful chickadees, one pine siskin, nuthatches, three stellars jays, a couple of magpies and gray jays and then today, the spruce grouse. Things could be worse.
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