Out of the blizzard!

I’ve been quite lax recently in keeping up with Roundtop Ruminations, and for that I apologize and will try to do better.  Lately, I’ve been taking photos and posting them on Facebook, mostly due to a lack of time. Feel free to friend me there, if you like (Carolyn Hoffman).  Those photos go up pretty much as soon as I take them, though often with a cellphone, as that is more quickly at hand, especially when I am walking the dogs.

Most of this past week has been spent shoveling 31” of snow that fell during the blizzard of 2016.  With help from Roundtop Mountain Resort, I now have my car dug out in and in my driveway.  Plus, the sibling, sibling-in-law and I have also gotten the farm’s driveway plowed out and dug out, at least as much as it’s going to get done.

The chickens have gotten over the shock of seeing so much snow, but still haven’t found their way clear to lay me any eggs.  I hope that changes soon! I can’t say I blame them, though.

Around the cabin, I’ve been seeing deer and turkey. They have been using the plowed driveways and walk paths for their own travel, as that is much easier than wading through so much snow, though doing so brings them closer to people.  They don’t appear to mind this. Somewhat to my surprise, the Carolina wrens are still around.  After a big snow in 1993 or 1996 they disappeared for several years.  Those little southern birds like to roost and nest under tree roots and similar ground tangles.  In heavy snows they are buried and can suffocate or starve.  But in this snow the birds were out and about the day after the blizzard, so they made it through this time well enough.

My feeders have been busy with birds—nothing rare this winter—though I have had some local birds that don’t normally appear in my feeders show up demanding food. The blue jays have been out in force, as have a pair of crows.  I think this is the first time I’ve had the crows in the bird feeders.  Naturally, these large birds empty the feeders faster than the little ones.  One of my errands today will be replenishing the bird seed.  I am nearly out, and the birds are counting on me!

Feeder birds, 1; weather forecaster, 0

Ominous morning clouds over Pinchot Lake

My feeder birds are better at predicting snow than the local forecasters.  Two days ago I wasn’t supposed to get any precipitation when I noticed the feeder birds chowing down in earnest.  That’s never a good sign.  It’s true they weren’t going at the bird seed like little demons, but the level of feeding was definitely higher than was normal for 10 a.m.  The clouds looked ominous, and snow wasn’t far to the south of me.  Perhaps it was just nearness of that coastal storm that set them off.  But no.

Within an hour, the first snowflakes appeared, and not long after that the snow was heavy enough that I couldn’t see the mountain to the west and before long I couldn’t even see to the bottom of Roundtop.  For an hour or so, the snow was pretty intense before it began to taper off.  The feeder birds do not lie.  They know when it’s going to snow.  They are not fooled.

This winter, I don’t have any exotic or unusual feeder birds, just the usual suspects in roughly the same numbers as is typical.  For me, this means about 5 Carolina chickadees, a pair of Northern Cardinals, 2-3 tufted titmice, a pair of Carolina wrens, another of eastern nuthatch, the ubiquitous downy woodpecker and an array of dark-eyed juncos that never seem to quite understand how feeders work.  They are much more likely to just sit around and watch the other birds eat from the feeders. Eventually, they return to the ground where they join the white-throated sparrows.

 I also have a few infrequent visitors—a pair of house finch and another of American goldfinch, the red-bellied woodpecker and occasionally the hairy woodpecker taps on the tree from which the bird feeders hang.  I have yet to see that one in the bird feeders.  I have no sign of pine siskins, let along the even more rare evening grosbeak or the rarer still, redpoll.

Still, I do not complain as watching these little ones flit in and out never gets old for me.  They teach me a lot about the behaviors of the different species, and, as weather forecasters go, they can’t be beat.

Snow finally arrives

Finally, Roundtop sees a measurable snow, if barely.  The snow blew through at dusk yesterday, accompanied by a vicious wind that made me glad I was inside the cabin in front of the fireplace.  Today, the wind is abating and no longer howls, but at 12 degrees, it doesn’t take much wind to feel bitter cold.

Today, all the birds are feeding heavily, emptying several of my feeders before noon.  And that’s without help from the chickens, who remained in their coop, unwilling to emerge, until after noon.  The wild birds don’t have that option, of course.  The number of them at the feeders today is causing an unusual amount of disagreements.  The white-breasted nuthatch don’t like each other and when they are not feeding, they are trying to chase each other away.  The juncos have something against both the titmice and chickadees and will force both of those species from the platform.  They simply don’t want to share.  For the first time I’ve had 5 Carolina chickadees at the feeders at the same time.  Until today I thought I only had 4 regular visitors. 

Oddly, even in this cold I’ve seen a few robins this morning, though one was sitting in the middle of the road as I drove off the mountain and only flew reluctantly.  Still, their cousins, the eastern bluebirds were singing this morning, so they are apparently getting by well enough.  It does, finally, feel (very much so) like winter, but after the warmth in December, it’s well past time for the season to appear in earnest.

Spring explodes!

This is the annual “spring is exploding” week at Roundtop.  In 2-3 short days, the forest leaves have gone from tiny leaf buds to fully-formed leaves, if not yet full-grown leaves.  I’ve lost my winter view of Nell’s Hill, which won’t return until November.

I took a photo on Sunday night at sunset where I could tell the view was “going,” but it was still rather nice.  This morning I could only make out where my neighboring mountain is because I know where it is.  I’ll take another photo tonight at sunset and then post both of them so you can see the difference a mere 3 days makes in how the forest looks. It’s amazing how fast the trees leaf out once they get going.

Warblers have arrived, skittering through the treetops around my cabin. So far I haven’t been able to identify many.  I have poor hearing for those high notes, so I can’t identify most of them that way.  And even with my expensive, trusty binoculars, those flitting shapes atop the tallest oaks are either 1) hidden by leaves  2)gone before I see them or3) those little things don’t show up well in poor early-morning light.  Oh, and there’s a 4) too.  I only find the females, which as they prefer more camouflaged coloring, unlike their gaudy mates, the distance and poor lighting doesn’t make them very easy to ID.  But trust me, they are up there.

The wood thrush and ovenbirds are singing away at dawn and dusk—those I can hear!  I’ve heard 3 separate males and probably 2 separate ovenbirds on my little patch of woods.  The forest is a busy place this week.  The first week of May is virtually always the busiest week of the year in these parts. It’s not a time to be indoors!

For the birds...

Northern cardinal, American goldfinch, junco, blue jay, titmice, Carolina chickadee, red-belling woodpecker, downy woodpecker, Carolina wren. They were the visitors at my winter feeders this morning. Crows flew overhead but didn’t deign to investigate. Two deer, a large doe and a still-small summer fawn, watched from about 20 feet away as I fed the chickens.

Ice hides under the latest coating of snow, making the morning chores treacherous. I inch along, careful with every step. It is not a pretty sight.

It’s a typical winter morning at my cabin. The mornings are still rather dark, partly because the hours of daylight are still short and partly because even when the sun is up elsewhere, the mountain hides the disc until nearly 9 a.m. Officially sunrise is still a bit after 7 a.m. The evenings are longer, and I do get the benefit of those longer minutes. Twilight hangs on later, now. It is still not fully dark even at 6:30 p.m., though the sun sets nearly an hour earlier.

The chickens still haven’t started laying again; they are still on winter egg break. They are done molting, though, and all their new feathers are grown in. I am spoiling them with mealworms and fresh sprouts, hoping to encourage them to start laying again soon. I miss those fresh eggs. I’ve heard that 14 hours of daylight is the optimum time for a chicken to lay eggs, and I’m a long way from that. I’m sure the overcast skies aren’t helping either. I guess I’ll just have to be patient a little while longer.

One after the other

Snowstorm after snowstorm. That’s how this winter is shaping up here on Roundtop Mtn. It’s a good thing most of the storms so far are small, as I can barely clean up from one before the next one follows a day or so later. I think three days between storms is the longevity record so far.
 

I am starting to feel that I am turning the corner on the cold I’ve had this week. It’s kept me cranky and indoors far more than I prefer. The dogs aren’t getting much in the way of walks, which means they have considerably more energy than I do. If only I could teach them to shovel snow, I would be further ahead, and perhaps that level of work would tire them out, leaving me warm and resting inside. It’s a pipe dream, I know. Skye would eat the shovel before he cleared any snow. Sparrow would forget about shoveling in favor of chasing the neighbor’s cats. Baby Dog is now nearly elderly herself and would deem shoveling beneath her in any case.

As yet, I haven’t seen any interesting winter finches at my feeders. Some are around. Repolls were spotted to the east, and some siskins have been reports. I have three goldfinch appear about once a day. I’ve discovered that I don’t have one very hungry male cardinal, but instead three of them who take turns at the feeders. After a slow start, the juncos have figured out how to eat from the tube feeders. They prefer the platform feeder, but that gets covered with snow about every other day, and I don’t always get out there to clear it out again.
 

Years ago, I lost all my Carolina wrens when two large snowstorms likely buried their hideout. It took years for the species to reappear on Roundtop. At the moment I have at least two and possibly three of them regularly at my feeders. So far they are doing okay, because the storms haven’t been large ones.

Sparrows, with the exception of the juncos, are in short supply. I’ve seen a white-throated sparrow exactly twice this winter. Even the usually ubiquitous song sparrows are in hiding.  It’s not even midwinter yet, but I feel as though this winter is already a long one.

 

Going, going, going...

Local Canada geese all veed up during flight practice with the young ones

Ruffed grouse, Pennsylvania’s state bird, will be nearly gone from the state by 2050 and will be gone by 2080, where it will only be found in Maine and perhaps the Adirondacks in the lower 48.  And that’s just one species, out of as many as 314 that could be threatened by continued climate change.

Such is the conclusion of a new report from Audubon about the future effects of climate change on birds in the U.S.  As many as 314 species, nearly half the species found in the U.S., are threatened. Using three decades of citizen-science observations and climate models, Audubon’s chief David Yarnold says the study is conservative in its predictions.  At http://climate.audubon.org/ you can read about which species will be affected and see the species projections by state or province.  There also you can ready how the science was conducted and learn more about what can be done. 

The report was discussed on NPR this morning at and in today’s New York Times, to name two spots.

Birders have long seen some evidence of this.  In the past 20 years I’ve seen the black-capped chickadee morph into a black-capped/Carolina chickadee hybrid and then the black-capped disappeared from Roundtop entirely, replaced by the Carolinas.  That’s just one example.  Another is the ever-growing range of the black vulture in my area, and the turkey vulture appearing ever further north.  Red-tailed hawks and Canada geese, to name two, no longer migrate the way they used to. Often then stay where they are or move late and then don’t go very far south for the winter.

Evening watch

 

I have been on nighthawk patrol every free evening this week. So far I have had little joy in that regard. Last night I had just one, so I am a tad jealous of people seeing 20 or 30 of these pretty birds scooting across a darkening sky. Still, I have no complaints. Standing outside in nice weather, no one else around, just watching the evening approach is its own reward.

The barn swallows have left the mountain, though I saw a few near the neighboring orchard yesterday. The yellow-billed cuckoo still calls from deeper in the forest. The eastern pewees call as well, but they are a late migrant and this is still early in the season. Robins are beginning to leave. Small groups of them move through the trees; often half of these groups are young birds, still spotted, still with yellow lores. I also had two flocks of cedar waxwings, a total of 25 birds. One flock stayed nearly half an hour in the top of a nearby tree, occasionally taking to the air to circle briefly before returning to the tree top again.

Last night a ruby-throated hummingbird zoomed around my shoulder. I wondered what attracted it until I realized it was investigating the red bulbs in my taillights. Hummingbirds are so predictable.

So the season is turning, slowly still, but inevitably. No longer do I ask myself if something I see is a migrant or simply an outlier. The answers are visible in an evening sky.

Wild birds and tame

Tufted Titmouse

A hard, cold rain dissolved the snow that fell a few days earlier.  Now I am left with a gloomy, overcast sky and a fierce, biting wind.  In short, it’s not a great day for photography, which is why I’m posting a few photos from late last week.  They will have to do until the light improves.

I had a brief few hours of nearly warm weather before the rain arrived, which I used to quickly clean out the chicken pen and fill the bird feeders.  The chickens were suitably grateful.  Whenever I add new straw to the coop, no matter how I scatter it, they spend an hour or so fluffing and getting it just so.  I call it “rearranging the furniture” to suit their liking.  Afterwards, it looks the same to me as when I was done with it, but obviously my efforts don’t meet their exacting standards.  They aren’t happy with how I scatter the straw, so they have to re-do all my handiwork.

The feeder birds are less exacting. They are happy if the feeders are full, though sometimes the titmice and the chickadees toss seed out of the feeders until they get one they really like.  The chickens usually hop their way up 7-8 stairs to reach the back deck.  They clean up whatever the wild birds leave behind, leaving nothing for the squirrels.

Carolina Chickadee

Too many snowstorms to keep them straight

A snowy sunrise at Roundtop Mtn.

December 2013 is proving to be unusually snowy for this area.  Many years I don’t even have snow on the ground for Christmas.  This year I’ve already had several snowstorms, and though none were huge, little ones of 3-5 inches every few days start to add up.  And I can’t tell you which of the last three storms today’s photo came from.  All these little snows are starting to look alike to me.

The latest storm brought both snow and ice.  Fortunately, the ice came after the snow, so I have a crust atop the snow rather than the other way around.  Good neighbor Roundtop plowed out my driveway on Sunday morning, perhaps noticing that I looked a bit glum with the task of shoveling the driveway yet again within three days.

After the storm was over, I tried to let the chickens out, but they weren’t having any part of it.  They wouldn’t set foot on that white carpet just outside their door.  They are still on winter egg break, and I am now down to my last egg.  I was hoping an afternoon of frolicking in winter sunshine might kickstart egg laying again, to no avail.

Bird activity at my feeders is high, and I haven’t see anything at all unusual there. I know not to expect winter finches this year, but even the common larger birds haven’t yet put in an appearance—no blue jays that I’ve seen, and only the occasional cardinals.   I heard the blue jays screaming all around the cabin; they just haven’t partaken of the feeders. The titmice, chickadees, nuthatch, Carolina wren and juncos are wildly active at the feeders all day long, even when it’s not snowing.

I’ve had a few years here at the cabin where winter started early, and snow stayed on the ground throughout. T hose years aren’t many, though.  This winter season might just turn out to be one of them.

More snow!

More snow fell on Roundtop yesterday.  This time the precipitation was not mixed with sleet or freezing rain or anything but snow.  About 5” fell atop the mixed precipitation from the day before, so today snow is above ankle deep.  For early December that’s actually a fair amount to be on the ground already.

With the ground snow-covered, birds flock to my feeders.  The small peanut feeder seems to be a big hit this year.  I’ve also noticed fewer northern cardinals than I’ve ever had. I have but a single pair that visits, and they don’t arrive regularly. In past years, I usually had 3 or 4 pairs that were often the first birds I’d see each morning.  This pair don’t arrive until well after dawn and often spend a while staring at the feeders before joining in, as though they don’t quite know what to make of it.

Carolina chickadee

So far, I haven’t seen any sign of other animals.  The deer must be keeping close to wherever they rode out the storm.  And a trip around the perimeter of the cabin late yesterday didn’t show any raccoon or rabbit tracks, either.  Temperatures are plummeting and will be cold for the rest of the week.  I have finally put away my heavy fall jacket and pulled the parka out of the closet.  There’s no indication I’ll be able to return to wearing the jacket anytime soon. Winter is here!

On the doorstep of winter

November is often a gray and windy month, so the past few days were completely normal ones for this time of year.  The raw wind brought down most of the leaves that remained on the trees.  Even the old oaks around my cabin are looking pretty bare today.

The sky is now open enough that I shortly after midnight I saw a fireball out the window to the north.  It wasn’t the biggest or the brightest fireball I’ve ever seen, but it was still exciting. I believe it made a sound, which is why think I woke up just in time to see it.

The colder weather brought changes around my cabin this weekend. I’ve added extra straw to the chicken pen.  The girls are molting this week, so they aren’t laying any eggs.  I’m hoping they will finish their molt before I run out of eggs.  When they do start laying again, they will do so at their winter level, which means I will only get perhaps half the number of eggs they laid during spring and summer.

Young animals will soon be experiencing their first winter. These summer calves will likely spend much of the winter in their barn.  They are still pretty small, and the cold weather will likely be a bit hard on them.  The spring calves are larger and at this point every month they are older than the summer calves will make the winter easier on them.  A feral cat at Roundtop had a litter of kittens just a week or so ago.  It’s hard to imagine any of those will survive the coming cold.  It’s not a good time of year for them to be born.

The smaller forest birds are beginning to use my feeders in earnest now.  For the past month, I’ve only had to fill the feeders once a week. Now, I have to fill them at least every other day.  Come winter, I’ll have to fill the feeders probably twice a day.  Now, the titmice, downy woodpecker, nuthatch and chickadees are emptying them pretty fast.  The juncos, which are suddenly common around the mountain, haven’t yet visited, nor have the larger residents like the cardinals, the red-bellied woodpecker and blue jays.  They are likely to arrive with the first snow or ice storm.  And that’s probably not far off, either.  Winter is coming, and for the first time, it’s starting to look as though it isn’t far away.

It's finally October!

It’s dreary and rainy, and the air is chilly, if not quite all the way into raw, today. I love it!  This feels exactly the way October should feel.  Of course, if the weather was like this for the entire month, I wouldn’t love it so much, but after the first week of the month when  temperatures was in the 80’s, I’m relieved to have everything back to normal again.

This is the kind of weather that gets all kinds of waterfowl moving south.  This is the kind of day when flock after flock of Canada geese will feel the urge to fly, the kind of day that reminds me the juncos will arrive soon. Winter is coming, after all.

This year I have a bumper crop of beech and hickory nuts, as well as acorns, around the cabin. They are falling off their trees, now.   When the big beech nuts land on the cabin roof, they land with a pop and then more noise as they roll down the pitched roof.  The noise always sets Baby Dog to barking.  Apparently, she thinks we are being attacked.  The nuts make quite a racket, and I’m awfully glad none have landed on my head when they fall.  At least not yet.

Most years I gather up the hickory nuts to eat, though sometimes the squirrels get to them before I can, so I don’t always end up with many that are fit to eat.  Right now, the deer that are living just off the edge of my driveway are enjoying their bounty, too. The oaks are providing plenty of acorns for the deer, though I can’t honestly say any of them look fat from them.

Activity at my feeders is picking up, too, with nuthatches, titmice and chickadees the most regular visitors.  That, as much as anything, is a sure sign the weather is turning towards cold weather.

Bird migration at its peak!

This week will be the biggest birding week of the year. It’s the week when migration explodes and millions of songbirds and summer residents head through the lower 48. Indications are already that birds are moving through the Central and mid-Atlantic. Many summer resident birds are here already, of course, though this week is still the biggest single time of the year for birds to move.

Unlike fall migration, which is spread out over a longer time, often with males, females and immature birds heading south on different schedules, spring migration is all about finding the best habitat for the best nest site and doing it before anyone else gets there or takes the best spot. Here in the northeast, we’ll have to wait for the low pressure system that’s sitting over top of us to move before the action really takes off. Last night, radar of the DC metro area showed a big concentration of birds, as did central Kansas.

Here at Roundtop, you can see what the sky looked like this morning—foggy, with rain expected off and on all day. It’s the kind of weather where birds like to sit and wait for conditions to improve. In a way, the concentration of birds in DC may prove to be unlucky for me just over a hundred miles or so to the north. Birds can cover 100 miles in several hours of flying; they may not stop here this year. It may be that only the birds who come for the season will land. The birds that we only see during migration may well not be ready to stop for lunch, let alone for the night, at the point when they will be over top of my cabin.

The serious bird radar watchers (or is that serious radar birdwatchers?) suggest that this year fewer birds are to be found anywhere on the trip north. Their radar spikes aren’t as concentrated or as large as is normal. I haven’t yet heard anyone discuss what that means—an ordinary variation in numbers, a sign of trouble in the wintering grounds. So I will try and resist the temptation to speculate and will instead just note it for the future. 

Busy spring doings

blue jay with nest material (nest in crook of tree above)

Spring showed up all over the place at Roundtop this weekend. Bloodroot bloomed (and the blooms are already dropping). The first of many spring beauties have appeared. The first ruby-crowned kinglets are flitting through the forest. And one of the local blue jays is building a nest just past the end of the cabin. I hope to be able to watch that progress and eventually see the little blue jays. The nest is pretty far up, though, and the nest doesn’t look as though it will be very easy to see into once the babies are born, but I will try.

Ruby-crowned kinglet



The ruby-crowned kinglets were flitting through the very highest of the trees, so my photos don’t show close views. I also took a lot of photos when I looked at them later that turned out to have no ruby-crowned kinglet in them. The birds flitted away between the time I saw them and the time the shutter clicked. That’s how fast they are. In the second photo of the kinglets, the little guy looks to be singing his heart out, beak pointed at the sky, his head thrust back, giving it all he’s worth.

The blue jay holds a twig in her beak and the nest is up in the crook of the tree above her. It’s the scroungy looking pile of twigs in the crook. I hope the bird will make that nest look a little more secure by the time the nest is done. Right now it doesn’t look as though it will hold an egg inside it. Of course, it is a work in progress, so there’s still time to fix it.


Singing ruby-crowned kinglet



Buds on the oaks and beech trees that make up most of my forest are starting to look bigger, though they are still weeks away from leafing out. For once, the first in several years, the timing of spring is at least close to normal. Likely the colder March had a lot to do with that. As a result I’m anticipating a decent spring for warblers here on Roundtop, hopeful that they won’t fly past the mountain without stopping first. So far, I don’t know if I’m right or not, but it’s certainly time to start looking for them.

Unfortunate signs of spring

Even though it’s snowing as I type, I’m afraid that it looks as though spring is approaching. This morning I saw several signs of the season’s change.

1. Several hundred common grackles invaded the tallest trees just above my cabin this morning and made an enormous amount of noise. To my ear they sounded like a very rusty piece of large machinery squeaking on the mountain. In fact, for a second I thought one of the snow grooming machines was the cause of the noise. To be fair, the birds did not seem to be traveling from south to north, but rather from west to east. Since the storm that is now bringing snow to the mountain was approaching from that direction at the time I saw them, it’s possible the birds were coming from some large field and simply moving ahead of the storm. At least that’s what I told myself before I saw...

2. A group of 7-8 black vultures circling over the orchard as I headed out to work. Black vultures are the southern cousins of the turkey vulture and are a recent invader from those climes, heading north on the wings of climate change over the last 20 years or so. While it is common to see the first turkey vulture of a new year on any winter day with a very slight warming trend, black vultures are likely to wait for an actual thaw before making their first appearance in my area. Vultures can travel good distances in a day, and frequently move south to north and back again several times as weather dictates. So seeing them today doesn’t mean they are here to stay, though I see them but rarely in January. Their arrival in February usually means spring isn’t far behind. But, these were circling just ahead of the impending storm, so I could possibly write off the sighting as storm-related, except that I saw a...

3. Dead skunk in the middle of the road. Folks, this one is the dealbreaker. The birds might be written off as traveling ahead of the storm, but the skunks are out and about, and there’s no denying what that means. Spring isn’t far away. Unfortunately.

The earliest birds

The Carolina wren first sang at 6:14 a.m. this morning. I checked to be sure of the time. At that hour no hint of dawn yet colors the eastern horizon. With the snow cover, even just the dusting, the forest is not dark at night. The white snow brightens the woods all night long, making a headlamp largely unnecessary at any hour. In other words, 6:14 a.m. is no lighter or darker than 2 a.m., and in fact, if the wren sings at 6:14, it might just as well sing at 2 a.m.
Still, despite the lack of visual cues, 6:14 a.m. was the first time this wren decided it was morning and proceeded to sing. I used to think northern cardinals were the earliest morning singers in winter, but the Carolina wren has altered that view. It makes me wonder, though, just how a wren knows it is morning when actual daylight is still a good hour off, and the hour it chooses to begin to sing looks the same as 2 a.m.

Doodle, my rooster, for example, doesn’t crow until there’s the barest hint of morning color in the sky. Unless, that is, I turn on my bedroom light in the middle of the night. Then he seems to think morning has come, and I’m likely to hear him crow a few times before I turn my light off again.

Birds are supposed to be sensitive to the so-called false dawn that is not visible to human eyes. False dawn begins about an hour before the actual sunrise. All I can say is that if the Carolina wren is sensing a false dawn, it is remarkably sensitive. This morning the sky was overcast and even foggy, so even the faint false dawn was shrouded by that. Still, the wren sang heartily, as it does every morning. Perhaps it is just hungry, its stomach telling it that food is needed. Mine does the same thing, sometimes.

Consolation

My weekend birding foray to Pinchot State Park was a lackluster one. The lake is now iced in, and though not yet open for winter activities, the ice is already strong enough that I could watch two park employees shuffle across it to place the “thin ice” signs. Because the lake is iced in, my hope of finding some waterfowl was not met, and I was further disheartened by yet another Sunday of overcast skies and gloomy light.


However, this morning the overcast sky and the rising sun combined to produce one of those spectacular and all-too-rare glorious natural moments. The sunrise this morning more than made up for the previous day’s lack. Roundotp’s snowmaking pond stays free of ice—they pump water into and from it so often that ice is rare—and the sunrise reflected on the water and through a patch of sawgrass along the edge. Sunrises don’t get any better than this, and this one was much appreciated on a Monday morning.

My birding this January is not resulting in much of interest. I am at a paltry 28 species for the new year. Normally, I can find over 30 species on January 1 alone. This January 1 I managed just 24 species and yesterday added only 4 new species. The cold weather of last week has moved the waterfowl away from here and towards open water—wherever that may be—and yesterday I saw but 1 turkey vulture. Black vultures, a more southern species, have likely decided that Maryland is looking better for them than Pennsylvania is right now.

With the exception of juncos, I have yet to find a sparrow in the new year. I haven’t seen a house sparrow or a song sparrow, let alone a white-throated sparrow. None are coming to my feeders at all right now. In other words, my birding year is not off to an auspicious start. I suppose I could say that means it can only get better, but I’m not even sure how likely that is. Maybe next week. At least today I had the sunrise to console me.

Welcome 2013 and Happy Perihelion

Belted Kingfisher

Happy perihelion! In case you’ve forgotten or hadn’t thought about it, today is the day when the earth is closest to the sun, proving it’s the earth’s tilt of 23.5% degrees that produces our seasons and not how far we are from the sun.


As is my own personal New Year’s Day tradition, I always try to sneak in a little birding around my family’s tradition of gathering for pork roast, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. This year emphasized a “little” birding that was limited to my own feeders and a brief trip to nearby Pinchot Lake. The number of species I found was low and not helped at all by the overcast sky and flat light. The weather looked as though a freezing rain or a wet snow would fall any second, but it never did. Birds were mostly few and far between, at least where I was looking. Sometimes the light was so poor I couldn’t tell a blue jay from a cardinal, and I gave up trying to identify sparrows. The little devils wouldn’t let me get close enough for a decent look, and the poor light didn’t give me a chance at the distance where they were.

But no matter, January is only just getting started, and I should have a good many more chances for brighter days to find a few of the smaller birds. The only photo I took on my mini-expedition was of this distant and too-dark belted kingfisher.

Finding a kingfisher on January 1 means that lakes and ponds have open water, as does Pinchot Lake right now. And that open water is a result of December 2012 being 5 degrees warmer than the most recent 30-year normal. In my area, that translates to an average of 38.8 degrees for December, against the normal of 35.43.

I have taken to fussing a bit every time I hear a forecaster say a temperature is warmer or colder than “normal.” They rarely explain that their version of normal is only taken from the past 30 years. If you think today’s temperatures are just a bit warmer than normal, you should compare them to the past 70 or 100 years or whatever number of years records are kept in your own area.

And I have done that for December in Harrisburg so you can better understand why I’m fussing.

Here’s the breakdown:
2012 December average – 38.8 or 3.4 degrees warmer than “normal” temperature of 35.43
1971-2001 – 34.8 - .6 degree lower than current range
1961-1990 – 34.21 - .6 degree lower or 1.2 degrees lower than current range
1951-1980 – 33.21 - 1 degree lower or 2.2 degrees lower
1941-1970 – 32.73 - .5 degree low or 2.7 degrees lower

In other words the difference between December 2012 and the oldest normal range is 6.1 degrees, even more extreme than the 3.4 degrees calculated using the current “normal” range.  I know we're not supposed to think about climate change this locally and that global temperatures have to be looked at. I’m just saying.

Between snows

A white Christmas has come and gone here at my little cabin on Roundtop Mtn. I was busier than a bee in May ahead of the holiday and slower than a slug on a cold morning afterwards. In between holiday preparations I was shoveling snow; snow is always a welcome sight to me.

Today, I am once again between snows. A wet snow arrived on Christmas Eve and another fell yesterday. Saturday yet a third snow is predicted. Today’s photo was taken along Beaver Creek at Pinchot State park, literally moments ahead of the December 26 snow. I did that deliberately, wanting to capture both the calm and the tin-gray sky. By the time I walked back to my car, big, wet flakes were already veiling the landscape.

At my cabin, things that weren’t put away are already obscured in vaguely artful shapes by a blanket of white. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. I probably won’t dig through the snow to find them either. If the winter remains snowy, whatever’s there will be there until spring.

The chickens are unhappy with the snow. For the younger girls, this is their first experience of snow, and they are unanimous in letting me know they don’t like it. The older chickens seem resigned and unhappy. At their ages, winter and snow are things to be endured, if possible. Their advanced chicken age makes it questionable they will see pleasant weather again.

The feeder birds are active, though I am still finch-deprived. It feels as though everyone I know who has even a makeshift feeder has gotten pine siskins and other winter finches at their feeders. I haven’t even had a goldfinch, even though I have one entire feeder that’s specifically designed for finches filled with delicious niger seed just for them. Instead I have woodpeckers and chickadees, nuthatches and juncos. Even the cardinals seem to prefer my neighbor’s feeders this year. Blue jays study the feeders but are not yet inclined to partake.

Yesterday in the snow, near dusk, I watched a doe and two summer fawns pick their way across and behind the cabin. The old doe led the two youngsters, who lagged behind. I imagined she was searching for a place to bed down where they would be protected from the falling snow. They have summered all around the cabin, hidden by patches of thick brush. Now that the snow is falling, those areas may not be as protected as others further down the mountain. The surrounding brush kept the world from seeing them but does little to protect them from wind or snow. I suspect the doe was heading down the mountain, looking for one of the little draws where they have both brush and wind protection. Other deer winter down there, too. Perhaps she will join them. I will stay up here at the cabin, warm and dry.