Calm and clear conditions allowed overnight temperatures to finally drop into the 20s for the first time this season. The cold looks to be short-lived, however, as the forecast calls for rain tomorrow.
My day was fairly scheduled with work calls, but I did take a short (~10 minute) saunter down the street and back first thing (for me) this morning, and another longer look around this afternoon as the sun dropped towards the horizon.
I did not find the Purple Finch either time, though I did hear a different sounding bird in a dense spruce tree. Unfortunately I never saw it, and I’m not sure whether it was a different call of a more typical bird or the finch.
It’s interesting to me how the activity level varies from yard to yard. Sometimes a given yard is completely silent, and at other times there are lots of birds. I think some of it is just the happenstance of the timing of my walk and the movements of the juncos (and some other birds), but sometimes I wonder if at least in part it might be due to predator activity. Perhaps it would be interesting to do a bird (language) sit with multiple people in my neighborhood sometime.
Late this evening as my day drew to a close, I noticed it had started snowing outside. Not much had fallen, just enough to turn the ground white, but snow has a transforming effect, especially when it’s falling at night, so I couldn’t resist taking a couple of pictures of this first snow (at sea level) of the season.
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
