Mary Ann at Five Wells is the host this week of I and the Bird #37. Her Thanksgiving-themed presentation is quite fitting.
I have additional thanks today. Since an Arctic front blew into the Austin area earlier today, our temperature never got out of the 30s and the biting winds (gusts also in the 30s, miles per hour, that is) made even going out to pick up the paper or collect the mail miserable.
I immediately flashed back to this posting about our Austin home and winter weather; it’s still applicable almost nine months later. But today seems colder than that February post. Maybe it was the wind. Maybe my memory of that earlier cold snap has dulled over time. Whatever, I know that today was so brutal that all of our local birds were in hiding, too.
So I hunkered down and warmed myself with the glow of the computer terminal. And I took a few online birding trips, savoring such ornithological delights as:
- Mary Ann’s own report on efforts to save Whooping Cranes,
- Lillian’s fantastic — I am not kidding, FANTASTIC! — photos of a fork-tailed flycatcher, and
- Samtzmom’s memories of when she was a novice birder.
These and the many more online sightings (including our Thanksgiving visit from a woodcock) in this edition of I and the Bird provide the perfect climatological and birding forecast. Happy birding and stay warm!
