Dark eyed junco.
The great white blanket may be here to stay for a while now. No more teasing flurries and flirty snowflakes. It is all out lay em down snow, and it ain’t going anywhere.
Many of the tell tale signs of winter are now here.The birds are now hanging around the big cedar trees by the house. Every morning they collect around the front and back door of the sun room.Every time the house door is opened they will flutter back up into the trees. Only the brave winter birds are still here, the Cardinals, House Sparrows, Chickadees, and the new arrivals from further north, the Juncos. Juncos are small, unassuming grey and white birds. They have no fancy plumage nor an interesting song. What they do have is a perfectly simple colour scheme that compliments it’s roly-poly proportions absolutely perfectly. Junco’s are highly social birds. they always seem to have some sort of juicy gossip going on and but never let anyone else in on the secret.
It is also the time of year where the ground tells stories. Summer like to keep it’s woodland secrets under wraps, but winter, she hides no one. Winter tells of the fox that came up to the compost pile to see what he could find, but found nothing and returned the way he came. The cat that thought the barn might be a good place to find food, and the coyote pair that thought it would check out the broiler barn manure pile. They weren’t in a hurry, but they did stop a couple of times to check out an interesting smell.
Another fox found the garage cat food and had a good game with the old shirt that was in the box. She checked out everywhere but only found one food dish. She didn’t return a second night.
The relationship between the stray Mum cat and the neighbours cat. They are getting used to each other but not enough to hang out…not yet.
