The first day of 2014 dawned bright and sunny, with a faint pink and peach hue to the pale blue morning sky. It was cold, too – bitterly cold. I left the house at 8:00 am with the temperature fluctuating between -24°C and -21°C, and although I was out until close to noon, it never really got any warmer.
New Year’s Sunrise
Snowy Owl
A successful birding outing depends on two things: knowing where to go, and luck – the kind of luck that comes from being in the right place at the right time. The last time I went birding with Deb, we went to the right places but missed just about every bird we were looking for. There is nothing more discouraging when birding, particularly in the winter when there aren’t many birds around to begin with and there are no butterflies, dragonflies or reptiles to make the outings more interesting. Too many outings like these and it becomes tempting to put away the binoculars until spring.
Fortunately, Deb and I had the complete opposite experience on Sunday. It was bitterly cold when we met at 8:00; it was a good thing I didn’t check the temperature before I left home, otherwise the -19°C temperature might have tempted me to stay at home in bed!
I got up really early on Saturday morning to go shopping. If there’s one thing I hate more than grocery shopping, it’s having to do it when the store is jam-packed full of people right before a holiday. Fortunately the SuperStore a few blocks from my house is open around the clock this time of year; I arrived at 6:30 in the morning, when the store clerks restocking the shelves out-numbered the relatively few shoppers. I picked up what I needed and left just as the sun was coming up.
I couldn’t resist taking a drive down Rushmore Road on my way home to see if I could find some wildlife hunting for food out in the fields. I didn’t see anything other than crows, but the sunrise was beautiful.
The Pathless Wood 