On Wednesday morning, I dropped the boys at their respective schools and headed to one of my favorite places, Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve. I knew the perfect snow that fell the night before would soon begin to melt and I wanted to get to the Preserve to photograph the wintry scenes. I wasn’t disappointed. There was about 5″ of it and was the perfect consistency. Not too heavy, not too light, just right to cling to branches, boughs and pine cones. The sweet gums that persisted on the trees looked like they had little dunce caps perched on the top of each one.

The sun was just coming over Bowman’s Hill and already, by 9:30, it was starting to melt the snow. Huge clumps of soft powder were falling from branches. It was like having a snowball fight with an invisible giant who could pelt you from above without knowing where it was coming from.

It was so quiet at first, but as I walked, the woods seemed to awaken. Canada geese flew over, their huge wings and their incessant honking were audible in the quiet of a winter morning. I watched a gray squirrel scurry down a tree, go directly to a particular spot, dig up an acorn, scurry back up and eat it. I’ve read gray squirrels only find about 1% of the nuts they bury, but they do sniff out other squirrels’ stashes.

The sky was so clear, it almost hurt my eyes to look up. I saw a flock of snow geese flying over head and I couldn’t change to my zoom lens fast enough, so I just took a shot of them with my regular lens. Tiny white specks in a crystal blue sky.

Pidcock Creek was frozen, but I could hear and see the water running under the ice. In a tree limb hanging above the creek was a bald-faced hornet’s nest. Long since abandoned, it held a pile of snow on top like a hat.

The time slipped by really fast, and I found myself rushing to get back for an 11am appointment. I hope all of you took the time to get out and enjoy the snow. Even if just for a few minutes. Snow reveals secrets you never thought could be right around the corner.

I get enormous satisfaction watching birds at my feeders. I love the spastic antics of Chickadees and Titmice; full of nervous energy. The deliberate, focused eating of Cardinals and House Finches. And the alarming bomb of the Bluejay, who joins the feast with such an exuberant entrance, it often startles the others momentarily, causing an explosion of fluff and feathers before they all settle down at their respective perches.

I don’t have an elaborate feeding system; just two sunflower seed feeders, a thistle feeder, which remains neglected for some reason and a suet feeder. I also have a heated bird bath that up until recently seemed only attractive to the 6 squirrels that share my yard as their territory. I guess, now that every puddle or water collection is frozen, the birds finally have shown interest in my offering.

On a recent glance, I noticed the feeders were suspiciously empty for several minutes. It was a cold day. If we were experiencing a warm day, I’d understand as many birds take advantage of insect hatches that occur when we have warm spells, but this was a cold day. I suspected my neighbor’s cat who seems to delight in stalking our backyard for easy pickings.

I went outside with the intention of chasing this cat out of my yard, but was surprised and admittedly pleased to find another predator.

Sharp-shinned hawk watching bird feeder

An adult (red eyes and horizontal streaking on his breast), Sharp-shinned Hawk, was sitting on the fence that is shared with my cat neighbor.

Sharp-shinned hawks are bird specialists, often catching feathered friends on the wing and eating them. They frequently hunt backyard bird feeding stations for easy prey, not unlike my neighbor’s cat. This is one predator I don’t mind sharing my yard with. Birds are birds. Well, not really, my hackles still go up when the starlings devour the suet, but that’s a different story.