Towheeblog

There was freezing rain overnight. There was still more freezing rain again today. Icicles that were an inch long at dawn were three inches long by evening. Conifers and sturdy evergreens like mahonia were unbowed. The Doug-firs and spruce and cedars have spent millions of years evolving to deal with wet snow. Their linmbs and needles lean toward the earth, letting ice or snow dribble off and fall down. Tough and flexible bamboo bent to the ground but will likely rebound. Thinner limbed critters, say nandina, were bent and bowed and may be seriously hurt by the weight of ice on twigs and leaves.

The cawing crow was on a light standard and making a series of loud calls. He bobbed forward with his head almost down to his feet, calling the whole time as the head rose on an arc until his beak pointed to the sky. Then the head and cawing circled back down toward the crow’s feet. The hole near the top of the bat box at Fairview Wetlands shows the work of a bored flicker, or maybe one that was just curious to see what’s inside. There was sleeping pair of GW Teal at Fairview, and a circle of shovelers–stirring up the water to bring more goodies in reach of their beaks. BTW, around the edge of the shoveler circle, were two female Bufflehead, picking off the the edibles that the shovelers missed.