Soon after breakfast, I suited up in warm clothes and went out to walk in the snow \u2013 we don\u2019t often get the chance and I didn\u2019t want to miss it. The snow had stopped, the sun was shining, and a strong, cold wind had almost cleared the soft blue sky of clouds, except for a few small, cottony puffs. Dark gray trunks of trees in the woods stood in pools of frigid shadows all around, rising from a patchwork quilt of white snow and brown leaves on the floor of the woods.<\/p>\n
<\/em><\/p>\n A good many songbirds were scattered around the feeders, in the trees and under the shrubs in the yard. Chipping Sparrows, Brown-headed Nuthatch, White-throated Sparrows, Northern Mockingbird, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Downy Woodpecker \u2013 but I didn\u2019t see the Fox Sparrow again.<\/p>\n The bright colors of a Northern Cardinal and an Eastern Bluebird perched in tall shrubs stood out like vivid, miniature paintings against the white snow and a blur of gray and brown limbs. A half dozen Dark-eyed Juncos flew up like soot-gray flecks of ashes from the ground into a bush as I walked past, twittering their high, sweet calls.<\/p>\n Pine Warbler, Carolina Wren and Northern Cardinal sang, and Tufted Titmice and Carolina Chickadees chattered. From down the road I could hear the conkarees<\/em> of a flock of Red-winged Blackbirds, and American Robins stood and skittered here and there, foraging in snow-covered yards. Blue Jays cried. And not too far away I could hear the sounds of children\u2019s laughter \u2013 out playing in the snow.<\/p>\n As I walked, I could see the tracks of crows, smaller birds, white-tailed deer, rabbits, raccoon, a couple of neighborhood dogs, and other tracks that I couldn\u2019t identify. I think one was a possum. Others might have been the tracks of a fox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Soon after breakfast, I suited up in warm clothes and went out to walk in the snow \u2013 we don\u2019t often get the chance and I didn\u2019t want to miss it. The snow had stopped, the sun was shining, and a strong, cold wind had almost cleared the soft blue sky of clouds, except for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1935"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1937,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935\/revisions\/1937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}