When I looked out of my window two days before sitting down to write this column, the sun was shining brightly, but I could hear the rumble of snowplows doing whatever snowplows do just previous to a snowstorm.
There was a light sprinkle of wet snow that clung to every fence of both wire and rail. The trees, both evergreen and deciduous, were covered likewise, painting a reality picture of a winter wonderland.
Today, just two days later, as I sit before my computer, I am listening to the radio announcer babbling of road closures, bus cancellations, and snow days for all schools.
The police were advising everyone to stay off the roads as whiteouts, with 70mph wind gusts, were not unusual. Both Highways 6 and 10 were closed.
This makes me stop and wonder. Not only do I wonder where our winter wonderland went, I wonder where our spring, summer and fall went. I wonder, too, why snow came so early, and I wonder why I heard the song on the music box blaring “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.”
I wondered, too, how the birds at my outdoor feeder would manage again this year.
When I wandered out to my birdy bungalow, I knew that I need not worry. Last year, due to the deepness of persisting drifts, some as high as eight feet in our yard, I realized I need not worry. I could not get near my feeder due to the depth of snow, so I started scattering some of the black oil sunflower seed on the ground in the pheasant enclosures.
This worked twofold: it not only encouraged the pheasants to scratch in the snow, which exposed many of the seeds that were included in their mix, but it also made it possible for the wild birds at my feeder to slip through the two-inch netting that covered the pens and gobble to their hearts’ content.
Today, as I looked out through the windows while I fed the canaries and fancy bantams, I could see that the wild birds, which had visited last year, had not forgotten. I am sure it was the same red-bellied woodpecker that was clinging upside down on the decorative cedar rails that I had just recently installed. He was obviously searching for hidden cocoons. His distant cousin, the hairy woodpecker, had joined its mate, and they were searching backwards up the trunks of the white birch cluster that flanked our Husky enclosure. They were joined by a pair of red-breasted nuthatch.
Half a dozen chickadees made trip after trip carrying a sunflower seed to store somewhere in crevices unknown. Blue jays, in uncountable numbers, having to squirm to get through the two-inch netting, did not hesitate to loudly voice their sarcastic opinion when the whole corn supply started running low.
Meanwhile, a pair of cardinals visited my feeder, and a dozen or more juncos spattered the snowy ground below the feeder.
It is my hope that the snow buntings, in large numbers, will come again as they have before. But last season, for whatever reason, they neglected to show up.
Take care, ‘cause we care.
barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-986-4105