AND STILL IT SNOWS... ~~ PARTING SHOT

AND STILL IT SNOWS...

February has turned out to be the snowiest month that Linda and I have seen since we moved here. So far this season, we have had a record-breaking 32" of snowfall, with 28.4" of it having fallen in February, according to the website How Much Will It Snow. We had 22 days in February in which it snowed (source: YakTriNews KVEW), breaking the records set in 2014. And I am sure it isn't done yet. But we have our pantry and freezer pretty well stocked (and bar, too). So we don't have to get out in it unless we want to. The days do seem awfully long, though, when you are stuck inside for days on end. We try to get out a couple of times each week, if the roads are clear enough.

One good thing from the snow was the arrival of the Varied Thrush.

Varied Thrush

I first saw this beautiful bird on Saturday morning, February 16th, when I thought I glimpsed a Robin up in the Catalpa tree. Most of the winter birds we have in Yakima are gray, black, or brown (or a combination of those colors), so when you see a bird of a different color, you notice it. This is so unlike North Carolina, where we had birds in every color of the rainbow, and most of them were year-round residents. Later that same day, Linda called me to the back window to look at a bird she had spotted. It was the same bird, and definitely not a Robin, so we got out our bird books and discovered that it was a Varied Thrush. This is a bird that we had actually seen once before, when we were on a hike in Ohanapecosh, a part of the Mount Rainier National Park. We had never seen this bird before in Yakima, so we were very excited. We actually saw two of them that day, a male and a female. They were both busy pecking away underneath the front and back feeders. The female seemed to think that the feeders were hers, because she was constantly chasing the male away. This bird moves fast, so I was lucky to get a few pretty good pictures of it while it was snowing. A couple of days later, the couple brought some friends with them and we had a total of five Thrushes in our yard. They usually split between the front and back feeders, chasing each other and sometimes the smaller birds. Often they would perch in the branches of our Thundercloud Plum tree in the front yard, keeping an eye on the feeder. I would sit inside and watch them watching the feeder. It was so nice to look outside and see several colorful birds perched in our tree.

A trio in the tree

Although we haven't actually seen him, I am almost sure that the Cooper's hawk is still hanging around. One reason is because we had "frozen" birds the other day. This is not an actual birding term that I know of, it's just something Linda and I use to refer to this phenomenon. It doesn't mean that the birds are actually frozen, it just means that they don't move for long periods of time. We have seen birds do this when we knew for sure that a hawk was around, so we just figured that they don't move so the hawk will not notice them. It is a pretty good indicator of the predator's presence. I got my binoculars out and looked at this Thrush below while he was frozen. I could almost see the fear in his eye.

Scared Motionless

Another bird that we haven't seen in the winter (but I believe we have seen in the summer) is the Golden-Crowned Sparrow. He's a feisty little guy, as you can see in the slideshow further down on the blog. It was so dark outside while it was snowing that at first I didn't notice the yellow crown on top of his head. But once I got a good closeup picture of him it was obvious.

Golden-Crowned Sparrow

A few of our old friends popped in one day to pay us a visit. We were so thrilled to see them!
(sound up!)

Some of our usual winter birds showed up, one of the most beautiful ones being the Spotted Towhee. It is extremely hard to get a good picture of this fellow as he is always on the move. He doesn't sit still for a second. As soon as I think I have a good picture of him and I squeeze the shutter button, he moves. So I usually wind up getting a picture of the back of his head. I still try, though, in hopes that one day I will luck out and get a fabulous photograph of this bird that we like to call by his former name, "Rufous."

This past Sunday morning we woke up to a couple of inches of snow that had fallen over the night. There's something to be said about sitting around a roaring fireplace with a cup of coffee, watching the snow fall outside. Later that day the snow had begun to melt a little bit, and the bushes outside our living room window resembled cotton plants, with cotton balls all over them. My friends in the South will see this resemblance right off, but I don't know about you Westerners.

Cotton plants?

Here is one last snow picture. Our neighbor that lives behind us has what has got to be the cutest bird feeder hanging from their walnut tree.

VW Microbus feeder

PARTING SHOT

I was going to get a current picture of Summer Girl to post, but she was so comfortable on top of the big bed that I didn't have the heart to mess her up. So here is montage of pictures of her taken in the past, during better weather. It looks like she does the same thing, no matter what the weather is! Enjoy!

See you here next week!