Does the image of a frozen birdbath bring to mind a small yellow bird with ice skates?
Few sights breathe life and color into a gray winter day like that of a backyard feeder bustling with birds. The Chestnut-back has a black head with a large white cheek patch, but its back and sides are a rich chestnut brown. The finches nest high in the mountains in summer, and roam the countryside in large flocks in winter. Thirty years ago, there were six million Northern Pintails in North America.
Trumpeter Swans land in a plowed field to forage for remnant potatoes, grain, and other waste crops.
When a Black-capped Chickadee visits your feeder, you may find its cousin, the Chestnut-backed Chickadee, tagging along. With an almost seven-foot wingspan and weighing nearly twenty-five pounds, this swan is among the largest of all waterfowl. Harlequins are unique in other ways, too.
It has a pleasing and rhythmical song, which it sings even in winter.
Have you ever wondered how some migrating birds return to the same location, year after year? Some, like the Harlequin, squeak. Others dive under the water, using their feet and occasionally their wings for propulsion. Few sights breathe life and color into a gray winter day like that of a backyard feeder bustling with birds.
The Wild Turkey, from which the domestic variety has been bred, is native to North America.
Just over three million.
The Black Oystercatcher is completely dependent on the marine shoreline for food, even in winter, when waves hit the rocks with awesome force. Yet one immense field appears snow-covered, blanketed in white. Beginning in the Sixteenth Century, local lads would go forth for a yearly wren hunt. Their lives and ours depend on the daily transformation of sunlight, through photosynthesis, into energy available to sustain us.