Snow - Finally!

Until yesterday it was an almost winterless winter. But we got a bit of snow overnight:

That big, gloppy, heavy snow that covers every branch. About 3 inches fell.

But what a difference an hour made. As the temperature approached the freezing point and the winds picked up, all the snow came off the trees. No where near as "magical" now!

By the afternoon, the snow was gone, but the temperature eventually dropped to 13°F (-10°C) with windchill below 0°F (-15°C). Cold!

Birds

I started this post last summer (June 2016), but with only two birds, wanted to wait for more. Now I have more!

June 2016:

Indigo bunting

American Goldfinch. Female on the left; male on the right.

March 2017:

The Great Blue Herons have returned to their rookery in a river-side sycamore tree.

And our resident cardinal still doesn't know the difference between his reflection and an intruder. Here he is attacking himself in the back window of our pickup truck.

We have a large flock of turkeys in our woods. We've seen about 20 at one time.

Song sparrow

This "tree cookie" shows a cross-section of a red maple showing evidence of repeated visits by Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers (a kind of woodpecker). The tree was about 75 years old when it fell down. It looks like it was visited by sapsuckers in at least 7 times, with about 5 to 10 years in between visits.