Spring? Not yet...

Living in the Colorado high country after the first day of Spring has come and gone is like flipping the light switch ON and the OFF and then ON and then OFF.  And with each sunrise you don't know what to expect...dry deck and stairs or ICY deck and stairs once out the door.  Not to worry, after I shattered my left ankle in a slip on ice out the door several years back, I always 'cleat up'.

I love that days are like this.  Lots of layers of clothing to start out the day - then all the way to short sleeves by mid afternoon, only to layer back up later.  

For the past two years I have been involved in Project Feeder Watch/Cornell Ornithology Labs, a program that counts birds. By signing up you spend an hour or two each week observing birds and their behaviors and report them to the website.  

This past couple of weeks with weather changing we have had some new visitors to the feeders, as well as some antics by the frequenting birds.  Crows are a part of who visits often for the fact that I fill up the suet feeders which they command being in charge of - pushing/displacing the Magpies to the ground or away.  Hundreds of House Finches fly in every hour or two to make a mess of my deck - with their feeding frenzy. but I love watching them.  When they all come in - it's like a scene from the movie "The Birds".

Crows made these wing marks in the snow near my front deck, upon closer examination, there were also mouse prints in the snow.  I would assume the mice were scrambling from the field to the underneath of the deck where they frequent..also going under the house.  However, crows won on many counts it appears. I put 'redneck' mousetraps under the house - and catch up to 20 mice a bucket over a period of several weeks..but I will let the crows take care of it anytime they want to.