It’s just plain brutal outside. We didn’t get as much snow as predicted because it rained for a longer time overnight. When the rain finally changed to freezing rain and snow, everything that was wet froze solid. When I went to bed last night it was 37 degrees. When I woke up this morning, 7 hours later, the temperature was 7 degrees. During the night you could hear the wind howling and the trees creaking and moaning as the water on their limbs started to freeze.
When I opened the shades this morning I saw a pathetic Mourning Dove with his feathers sticking up every which way and a Red-breasted Nuthatch frantically trying to get a seed from any feeder, but they were all frozen solid. I went outside with a paint scraper and got the seed moving again in the big feeders. I brought the tube feeders inside where I thawed them, dried them off and poured in new seed. The birds barely waited for me to hang them before they were flying in from everywhere to eat.
That’s our Christmas tree in the photo above. The needles were turning brown and falling off at an alarming rate (it doesn’t surprise me considering the drought we had in July) so we wrestled it outside on Friday night and plunked it in a snowbank near the backyard birdfeeding station. The Juncos love it and are taking refuge in it from our nasty blizzard-like winds. I think it’s just as pretty outside as it was inside.