Gray and white

Tufted titmouse

 Snow certainly always brings birds to my feeders. And during snows the birds tend not to grab a seed and then disappear for hours. They arrive and stay for hours, hopping into a tree only long enough to eat their precious seed or wait for an opening before diving into the feeders again.

Yesterday’s snow was no exception, so I will show you two of the regular visitors to my feeders. The first is a tufted titmouse, a tiny little bird that grabs a seed and then lights on a nearby twig to eat it. When gone, it immediately returns to the feeders for a second seed and then repeats the process. I’ve always thought they must use nearly as many calories as they get from their single seed in their flights back and forth.

My second gray bird today is the dark-eyed junco, a winter-only resident from the north, who seems to view this part of the world the way people around here do a winter in Florida. Pennsylvania is south to this little bird.


Dark-eyed junco



Both the junco and the titmice are regular winter visitors to my feeders, and both are as common as chickens during winter. I still like to see them.

Yesterday I got about 6” of snow, a good amount here for this time of year. The snow is already melting. In fact, late yesterday afternoon the snow was melting and falling at the same time with the temperature at 33-34. I also found it odd to hear robins singing during the falling snow, with twittering juncos providing back-up vocals. I don’t get that one every day. Not only was the idea of snow and robins a rarity, so was the simultaneous presence of both the summer and the winter residents. March 2013 is proving to be unusual in several respects. It certainly makes me wonder what’s going to be ahead in April.