Another Frosty Morning

This morning early, Stellars Jays reminding us that they needed peanuts. I thought for sure someone was at the door knocking. After about an hour later, we saw our Shrike. He always sits in the same place in the spruce tree to the right of our kitchen window. About three hours later, he was there again. Creatures of habit. The brown creeper has been around this morning as well. We saw one black-capped chickadee last week with a distorted beak. First one in ages. Other usual visitors to the feeders are our two kinds of chickadees, nuthatches, magpies, gray jays and Stellars, and an occasional fly-over by ravens. No siskins or redpolls since the one pine siskin last week. One block away, our neighboring business has several mountain ash trees, visited by Bohemian waxwings. Nothing to bring them to our house though.

NIMBY

Great sighting of 6-7 Pine Grosbeaks this morning, in someone else's backyard. My friend has two-three smallish Mountain Ash trees with red clumps of berries. All of a sudden we noticed bird activity. I assumed it would be Bohemian Waxwings. Grabbed a pair of binoculars and WOW! It was beautiful red Pine Grosbeaks, 5-6 males and 1 female. They stayed around for about 1-2 minutes, then a raven came cruising by and they left.

This morning fog on the river, temps in the minus degrees. Frost everywhere - beautiful.

Wind and Cold

Had a northern shrike here yesterday, albeit so windy. We saw him twice. Also have caught three mice in our house, total count so far. This morning the wind has died down considerably.

An interesting note related to last summer's sighting of the Blackpoll warbler, back in June:

According to the Alaska Audubon News, the Blackpoll warbler's numbers are decreasing by about 2.5 percent a year, unknown causes. They migrate the farthest of any warbler, some Alaskan birds winter in Brazil. They fly approximately 1800 miles over the Atlantic Ocean. They breed in the boreal forest. We were so lucky to see one here - the water is what attracted the one we saw. Who knows, maybe there was a family of them around here somewhere, but we only saw it one time.

Winter is Here

The first snow was followed about a week later by another big snow, about 8 inches to shovel last Saturday morning. One lone pine siskin showed up.  Also our brown creeper has been visiting us almost daily. I should say, we have seen him almost daily. He's probably been here even when we didn't see him! Also saw a small flock of ducks flying over earlier today, headed our way from the Kenai River. They were too high to identify.

Otherwise, nothing new to report. Colder temps and more snow, it definitely feels like winter now.

Snowfall

Our first big snow came yesterday. Along with it, many boreal and black-capped chickadees visited our peanut butter stanchion and the seeds on the feeders. One of the trees near our backporch feeder blew over, uprooted, after Tuesday night's windstorm. We will have to build a little protective wall around the feeder because it is now more exposed to rain and snow.

In addition to our usual feeders that come in daily, Tom went out to add seed to a feeder and had a fly-by, near his scalp, of a sharp-shinned hawk. We decided that Tom's hair must have looked like a snowshoe hare.

Our friend Scott Moon photographed this lovely winter visitor. We never have them in our yard but love seeing them around town.