Snow!

They said it would snow and it did! Quite a lot - it was the kind of day that makes your want to hunker down inside. The snow was more than ankle deep but less than knee deep when I went out this afternoon and a bit of a struggle to walk through. Still snowing too - little flakes so they don't show up in the picture (they showed up quite well on the lens though if I didn't take care!).

We had quite a lot of fun watching the birds trying to fly in the blowing snow - goldfinches, chickadees and nuthatches mostly, with a few purple finches thrown in for good measure. (I like to see how they respond to life's challenges.) They were very active, with a constant stream zipping to and fro between the trees and the tube feeder that hangs outside our kitchen window. It's not clear how they manage without aviation goggles, but they do, although they did struggle a bit today, with many an abortive attempt to land on the feeder and quite a bit of hovering and sideways flying.

Every now and then Most days I have to take the feeder in for refilling. Funnily enough, the birds never seem to notice that it's missing until it's too late, launching themselves from the nearby pine tree in a trip that finishes with a lot of cartoonish stopping in midair. Well today I opened the window at just the wrong moment and a chickadee came sailing through, right into the kitchen! It was clearly as shocked as I was and managed to turn around and fly straight back out (much to my relief). So glad it was a chickadee and not a blue jay though.

Polk County, Wisconsin