First winter storm of 2006
November 30, 2006: We had our first winter storm of 2006 this week. Somehow, the storms from last January and February belong to the winter of 2005, even though technically they did happen in 2006. Anyway, what we actually had was two storms: an ice storm that started Wednesday afternoon and ran into the night, and then a snow storm the following day. We had a mild fall. In fact, in recent years our winters have been mild overall. Early in the week the temperature was in the 60s, which is hard to believe given these images.
I decided to work from home on Thursday, rather than struggle into the office with the prospect of leaving early, again, if the predicted storm hit in the afternoon. It actually started in the early afternoon. I was able to get in a full day of work and still had time to take some pictures of birds foraging in our backyard. I got some wonderful shots of dark-eyed junkos all puffed up to stay warm in the cold weather. They spent a lot of time skipping about in the snow, digging down to seeds on the ground with scraping backward hops that threw snow out behind them.
I struggled to limit myself in this story to just a few of the many fun pictures I got. I’ll probably pop a few more into the navigational sidbars on some other pages for fun.
In addition to the junkos, I photographed two rare vistors. One was the Carolina wren shown here. We’ve been seeing (and hearing!) this wren for the past month or so. I’ve never seen it on our feeders, but it will peck around on our back porch near the seed storage bins gathering up sunflower chips dropped when we fill the chip feeder. Initially, the chips were dropped accidentally, but when we noticed the wren frequenting the spot, we got in the habit of dropping some on purpose.I’m not sure why this wren hasn’t flown on south, yet. I don’t think they generally winter over in this area. We’re a little worried that it might be sickly and not strong enough to migrate.
And here is the other rare visitor — a white-throated sparrow, surrounded by decidely un-rare house sparrows (above). I hadn’t realized how much smaller white-throated sparrows are compared with house sparrows. At any rate, the bird’s white throat can clearly be seen in the above image, along with the yellow markings just above its beak.
I’ve seen white-throated sparrows in the meadow on the west side of our neighborhood before, but this is the first one I’ve seen in our backyard. I was lucky to get a picture. I thought I was going to get a great closeup too, but it turned its back to me with the uncanny instinct so often exhibited by the feathered sort when a camera is involved. A nice picture of its backside, anyway.
And here is one more picture of our lovely wren.
