With the local elections now over, Nature is making the final preparations for the upcoming Winter season. The Fall (Autumn) leaves are leaving their parent trees, which are very near to being completely bare, in their energy saving mode for winter. The birds are on the move and large flocks of geese are landing on the creek, at the end of our road, prior to their departure for the sunny south! These last few days of record breaking “highs” must be upsetting their biological clocks, but probably not too drastically, as most of those who usually go have already departed.
A brief look out of the window on this bright, but cool, day brought my attention to some Slate-colored Juncos ground feeding, to the rear of the house, in the sunny patches of the grass and pine needles. They are our faithful guests for the winter, who have those lovely dark and white distinctive markings that never seem to fade away. Being ground feeders and always a little bit “skittish”, it is hard to get a really good sighting of them to get a good picture and the same goes for the Chipping Sparrow that joined the ones that I was watching! There didn’t seem to be much action going on, besides these few birds, so I went back inside to commence my weekly writings to you all, feeling a little bit disappointed! However, whilst writing this article, I happened to go back upstairs and look out of the front window and, lo and behold, I got to see a White-breasted Nuthatch, two Rock Pigeons, a Blue Jay and a Crow, so all was not lost, and I came back to finish this article a bit happier than when I first started writing…Hopefully you too are getting similar such lucky breaks in your bird sightings and you are getting to enjoy them as well. Please remember that however you get to see the birds and the rest of Nature, stay safe and well.
Cheers, John Baldwin
