The first snowfall of the season is usually pretty gentle, so it’s usually not too difficult to ease into the chill and the wet and the shoveling. This year’s entry was more of a whiplash affair. On Saturday the grass was still green, and I even spotted several people mowing their lawns for the last time to burn off any extra gasoline. By yesterday afternoon everything was blanketed in white and the neighborhood was humming with the sound of snowblowers.
About 4+ inches of wet snow fell throughout the day yesterday. Because it had been pretty mild leading up to this first storm of the season, the pavement was still warm, so the snow melted on contact until there was too much snow to overcome. Then it turned into a nice ice and slush layer that hid under the snow and waited for unsuspecting shovelers like me to take a tumble on the pavement (just a banged up knee).
Because I figured the birds were as shocked as I was about this sudden change in weather, I cleared off the feeders for them several times throughout the day. I stopped offering peanuts 2 weeks ago because a flock of starlings has discovered my little feeding oasis and they are peanut addicts. But yesterday I treated everybody to peanuts. Even when the snow got several inches deep on the platform feeder, the House Sparrows continued to drill down for those precious peanuts.
Some of my shrubs still have leaves on them. I’m sure they won’t be able to hang on much longer. If the snow doesn’t nudge them off, the temperature drop we’re expecting later in the week should do the trick. Our HIGH temperatures are expected to be about 15 degrees colder then our average lows have been lately. Welcome to winter!
I heard a flock of geese fly over when I was shoveling. They finally realized there wouldn’t be green grass and open water around here for the entire winter, and decided to head south.
And a large flock of Dark-eyed Juncos appeared in my yard yesterday. Last year I only had a handful of the birds, but yesterday there were more than 40 hopping around in the snow under the feeders.
They didn’t seem at all phased by the sudden transformation from green to white.