Icing stream

The December thaw is underway at my cabin.  The carpet of snow is shrinking and may well disappear by Sunday.  It’s not a surprise that I’m getting a thaw. It’s more unusual that most of the month was as continually chilly as it has been.

Baby Dog and I enjoy our nighttime walks just before bed.  I like to check around the cabin to make sure all is well and to look and see what’s going on around me in the forest.  This year I’ve noticed one thing lacking—I haven’t been hearing the call of a great horned owl.  For all the years I’ve lived at the cabin, the sound of a nighttime owl, usually the great horned but sometimes the screech owl, often accompanied our forays.  This year I haven’t heard an owl call since September and that one was quite distant.  More typical was 2012 where hardly a week went by without hearing one or two. I hope this is but a temporary lack, a miscommunications between their schedules and mine.

With just 11 days left in 2013, I’m already looking ahead to a new birding year in 2014.  As I mostly enjoy birding in the forest on Roundtop, the odds aren’t high that I will find a new species for my 2013 list.  And that means that I’m looking ahead to 2014. I will likely participate in the Greenbirding challenge for other people like me who don’t chase birds all over the state or country or county trying to gather up more species than anyone else.   I will try and gather up species at Roundtop—saves on gas, for one thing.  For another, not driving someplace to find a bird gives me more time to bird.