The O-Zone

Watching snow melt is sort of like watching paint dry… just not as fast.

Less than two feet of snow on the ground now. Progress, of sorts, is being made.

The driveway is a sheet of ice, especially the small hill we have to go down to get to the garage.  With a bare touch of the brakes, we can get the Outback going sideways, but fortunately the high snowbanks on either side keep us from going too far sideways.

Another five or six inches so far in the last 18 hours, and no sign it is going to stop soon.

No point in shoveling the sidewalk until the snow stops. And if I shovel the sidewalk, it will snow again. A conundrum, to be sure.

Really????

We have had about eight inches of snow the last couple of days. Everytime I shovel the sidewalk, it snows again. Perhaps this is cause and effect.

It staggers our minds to think in two months there will be wildflowers, green grass, and hummingbirds arriving at our windows and peering in, asking where are their feeders, assuming we don’t get them up ahead of time.  Can’t even imagine “green.”

One day it can be snowing, the next day fog moves in and coats everything with frost, and then the fog disappears and sunshine reigns supreme.

Spring-ish snowflakes. Big. Fat. Fluffy. Numerous.

Frost covered trees as the fog lifts.

I saw something very cool on Saturday as I was driving down the hill, just below our house.

A cat by the side of the road.  Who is that, I wondered.  Then the cat dove headfirst into a snowbank, and emerged moments later with a Pocket Gopher in its mouth.  While it was in the snowbank, I noticed no tail.  The cat looked at me, and then took two or three jumps across the snow and landed on the side of a Ponderosa Pine, about four or five feet above the ground, and a second later was sitting on a large branch looking at me, prey still firmly clamped in its mouth.  A Bobcat.  Cool!!  I was so glad I hadn’t ruined their hunting expedition.

We hear them calling this time of year, in fact when I went out to take a picture I heard this bird’s partner calling in the distance.  And because they hunt in the day time, we get to see them occasionally.

Dan spotted this bird in the tree in front of the house.  The Chickadees were having a fit about a predator, and it was pretty easy to take a picture of him hiding in the tree near the seed feeders.   He only thinks he’s invisible.

These little predators are about five inches long, a small bird but really big on attitude and blood-thirsty points of view. The Chickadees are right to be very concerned.

Those piercing eyes were focused on a Chickadee that was sitting on a nearby bush, yelling about the owl he had located.

Friday was National Chocolate Cake Day, and of course I had to do something about it.  I made cupcakes and we’re still celebrating.

Dark chocolate cupcake with a chocolate icing. I thought about putting sprinkles on top but decided that would be merely silly.

Really cold air came down from the north and collided with warmer (relatively), moist air from the west, and we ended up with about five inches of snow.  If the forecast is accurate, we should see another two to five inches of snow by tomorrow morning.  It’s a good thing we plowed the driveway yesterday.

This morning all that moisture created a fogbank, shrouding the hillside as the sun came up.

A lavender world. Neat!

Swiftly fly the days. Or something like that.

Cold Arctic air came to visit us, bring 2F for our low temperature and clear skies (finally). Slightly past full, the moon set in a pink sunrise.

Then all day, clear skies and cold.  Our solar panels like this sort of weather a lot.  Nothing much happened today.

Clouds were forecast, and here they come, bringing a pink sunset. It should moderate the overnight low temperatures. Splitting lots of firewood to keep the house warm.

On December 23rd we went about 70 miles west of here to a lake where we saw a new life species, a Ross’s Gull. It’s hard to express just how cool that is, and unless somebody is a birdwatcher, they won’t understand.

This is the rarest of all North American birds, a small gull that lives farther north than Polar Bears. They spend their winters on the sea ice, and nest on tundra lakes, mostly in Siberia. Little is known about them, actually, as they are so far north. There have been three sightings on the west coast of North America, and the one near us is the first one in 10 years.

It was a balmy 7F when we set off on our drive.

It’s a new year on our birding list (we start with the Winter Solstice), and the new birds we added to the list for the year, besides our yard list of usual suspects, is:

Bald Eagle
Song Sparrow
American Kestrel
Black-billed Magpie
Bufflehead (love those little guys)
American Goldfinch
Ross’s Gull = the highlight of the year most likely
Tundra Swan
Common Goldeneye
California Quail
Starling
Red-tailed Hawk
Ruff-legged Hawk
Snow Bunting
Belted Kingfisher

When we arrived at the lake, it was easy to see where the bird might be hanging out by the number of cars. License plates from Washington, Oregon, California, and British Columbia all attested to the importance of this sighting, and everybody we talked to was happy and excited, and cold.

My first view of the gull was across the lake. Through the binoculars, I saw it standing on some ice, and then it put its wings straight up in the air, giving a great look at the darker gray under the wings, and the light hit it’s breast just right so I could see a rose tint. It could have been rose-colored glasses but I swear I saw the color. The dark spot on the head was clearly visible and is diagnostic, as is the small size. So exciting!!!! Then the bird lifted off into the air and flitted around, flying like a tern. It stayed too far away for a picture, unfortunately, but it was so neat to watch it flying around, back and forth above the edge of ice on open water. We heard that the day before yesterday a Peregrin Falcon chased the gull away for a while, much to the dismay of every birder on the shore. People are flocking from all around to see this bird.

We’re off to a good start!

On Monday we’re going to see if we can find the Snowy Owl that is near here, out in the flats. That’s my most favorite owl of all, and we don’t get to see them very often.

We have about five inches of snow on the ground from the past couple of days of snowfall, and Dan plowed the driveway while the snow was still light and fluffy. Good thing he did that early in the day as it went over freezing by early afternoon. Just mild weather in the forecast for this next week too. Strange winter.

We drove to ‘town’ today to fill a couple of gas cans for the generator. The clouds have prevented us from gaining much, if any, solar gain for our batteries.

Bighorn sheep on the hillside above the road. They crossed the road in front of us last time we went to buy gas for the generator. So this time I took the camera.

He has the biggest horns in this group, which makes him the boss.

They stay in different groups.  The males all stick together, and the females and this years’ babies are all in a different group.  They were re-introduced in the mountains around us, which means they unloaded a stock trailer with sheep who scampered up the mountains, and have been doing fine.  This occurred many years ago.  Anyway, it’s always fun to see them on the road or on the hillside next to the road.

We also saw quite a few Dippers standing on the ice on the river, next to open water, bobbing and dipping their tails, and then jumping into the ice cold water, only to pop out again a few seconds later, tiny balls of water rolling off their tightly packed feathers, like they were made of teflon.  One of our favorite birds.

We saw one eagle flying, and a couple of hawks sitting on trees to round out the wildlife watching that accompanied our chore of buying gasoline.

More wildlife….

Cookie monster eyeing her natural prey, deciding which looks the most yummy.

Decision made, chocolate chippers is it. I had to set the camera down quickly and rescue the plate of cookies.

She thought this whole experience was just too fun for words.