A Winter’s Day
Looks like a Paul Simon song out my window. There’s a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow all over the woods behind our building. The black trees are frozen stiffly in place. The sky is a gray felt hat pulled down tight. Our bird feeders are by reservation only. The squirrels are scrunched up tight against the ground ravenously devouring the black oil sunflower seeds scattered about.
It’s a pretty picture-postcard, but I’m fantasizing about spring. I see goldfinch transformed from drab winter brown to brilliant summer yellow. I long for tender green leaves and deep shade sheltering a newborn fawn. And to feel a gentle breeze through my sliding door as I’m soothed by water splashing from the fountain in our reflecting pool.
Bitter winter temperatures and snow on the ground is a hardscrabble existence for the animals. Our furnace at home went out a few days ago, and even though the new one makes the house all toasty, I’m still not warm. The failed furnace gave me insight into the plight of the homeless and of my woodland friends all puffed up against the cold.
During milder winter days we never see birds in these numbers or variety at our back door: chickadee, titmouse, dark-eyed junco, harris sparrow, white-throated sparrow, goldfinch, house finch, cardinal, downy woodpecker, red-breasted woodpecker, and Carolina wren, to name the most common. Squirrels are daily visitors. But the snow blanketing the ground has driven animals we rarely see out into the open; even a rabbit lumbers awkwardly through the snow to our larder. For the most part, even when the day’s offering begins to run low, all animals share without conflict. The exception is that birds of the same species do have their pecking order.
In unison, the birds explode from the ground and race to cover. Either someone walked by the windows on the back of the building, which happens often, or a hawk is about. A blue jay screams raucously. And there it is: the party pooper – either a cooper’s or sharp-shinned hawk. Perched majestically on a hackberry limb about 15 feet above the forest floor, the predator is immobile except for its head rotating purposefully. Closer examination says the interloper is almost certainly a cooper’s. Standing nearly twenty inches, a large cooper’s is about the size of an average crow. Perfectly adapted for flying aggressively through trees, with short, powerful wings and a long tail for balance, they make their living feasting on smaller birds and animals. When they’re about, feeding birds at a feeder is like setting the table. Even the squirrels take cover.
It’s a deep and dark December.