icicles hanging

icicles hanging

from a red and white octagon --

Winter, STOP!

I know there are places in the world where snow never ends and places where snow is never seen, but here in the heartland of America, winter is capricious. Sometimes, no snow, sometimes snow comes and melts and piles up again, and sometimes snow lasts all winter. 
          I don't mind snow, especially squeaky, sparkly powder, but I am not fond of ice, especially on roads. But this year was the coldest in nearly two decades, with repeated arctic blasts sending temperatures plunging to double digits below zero F. "Polar vortex," they call it, and after weekly rounds for several months, we are more than ready for winter to simply STOP! 
          However, it was so cold on Groundhog Day that our local woodchuck stayed firmly in his subterranean nest and refused to emerge to see whether he even had a shadow, so we can only assume that we still have six more weeks of winter to endure. 
          On the other hand, I have been seeing flocks of robins flying through the bare trees and goldfinches are molting from winter olive drab to sunflower summer yellow. Like all things in nature, nothing lasts forever, not even the darkest, coldest winter. Right now, a robin sitting on the branch of our cherry tree is singing: "Cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up!"

decked out for mating

decked out for mating,

a goldfinch on the lookout

from a sunchoke leaf

A flock of American goldfinches have been visiting our bird feeders for black oil sunflower and Niger thistle seeds. They like to perch on the ladder-like leaves of the tall sunchokes growing near the feeders, one of the few plants still green and growing. Goldfinches primarily eat seeds from grasses, wildflowers and trees, but due to this summer's drought they may be having a hard time finding enough seeds in the dry meadows and woods.
          Most of the year, both males and females are a dull olive, but in spring the male changes to bright yellow feathers and a shiny black cap in preparation for the summer mating season. Perhaps this jaunty fellow is on the lookout for a likely mate.
          I'm surprised that the sunchokes are doing so well in the drought, but these are hardy plants. I tucked a few tubers along the fence a year ago and they quickly multiplied to take over the entire south side of the garden. Even after the whitetail deer jumped the low fence and nipped off the tops of the plants, they just keep growing and now their goldfinch-yellow flowers are starting to bloom on top. Still, it's nice to look out the windows and see a green screen masking the brown grass beyond the fence.

dead finch in the snow

dead finch in the snow

resting on a bed of white

feet pointing skyward

This winter has been hard on all wild creatures, large and small. When I step into the summer sleeping porch to get a better view of a line of cat tracks in the snow, I find this goldfinch lying upside down on the ledge outside the window. I fear that the poor little bird did not expire from the cold but from a blow to the head when it flew into the window. We purposefully do not wash the glass so that it will be less deceptively transparent, but even so, some birds do collide, a reminder that we impact our environment just by inhabiting the same space as natives.

winter-brown goldfinch

winter-brown goldfinch

knocking seeds from dry wildflowers

to peck from the snow

A small flock of goldfinches in their winter-brown feathers are hopping onto the stems of dry grasses and wildflowers poking up from the drifts, knocking the seeds onto the snow and then hopping down to peck them up. They don't seem to notice me watching from a few feet away. Nothing else moves anywhere in this expanse of white and cold. I reflect on what a good thing it is to leave our yard not mowed, so the birds can harvest the seeds when the ground is covered in two feet of snow.