Design

Happily, it was sunny and dry today. Yesterday, too. Cloudy with intermittent sun was a lot better than the rain that was predicted for yesterday, and today was just plain nice late winter weather (for the Southeastern US), with a high around 50°F. I saw a downy woodpecker foraging for breakfast on my morning walk. It was definitely nice enough to find me tidying the garden shed, poking around the beds, and doing some weeding. Amazingly, the squirrels had left just enough radicchio to harvest and try roasting with garlic, olive oil, and herbs. Yum. It was totally different than the bitter leaves of warmer weather, and well worth trying to protect from herbivory in future seasons. I also saw a flock of robins mobbing the fruits of hollies this morning. There are lots of holly fruits this year, and we're seeing robins in exceptionally large numbers. The newspaper yesterday had an El Nino story as well as a piece about how we've exceeded rain records for December and January. H...

A sign that winter is progressing are the flocks of robins, descending on berry-laden hollies. They're not unlike the cedar waxwing flocks, taking turns swooping down on the hollies and back up to branches on the bare oaks. They're both sociable winter birds: a nice piece from Journey North that I just found describes their behavior. The birds I heard and saw today outside my office in the Garden had a melodic murmur; without my (regular) glasses or binoculars, I couldn't see them clearly, but based on the sound, they may have been cedar waxwings (also from the Journey North site courtesy of Lang Elliot) rather than the robins I saw at home recently. Both are welcome signs that winter is moving towards spring.