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Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Cold weather and birds

13 degrees tonight, everything snow covered and icy, and the wind still. Winter is making itself at home, and even our fires can't keep it at bay. I sit in the rocker in front of the old stone fireplace, watch the flames and hear winter howling at the windows. A good night to be indoors.

This morning as I watched the birds at the feeder a flock of a dozen starlings suddenly flew in, scattering the smaller birds and raising a raucous racket. I was surprised, because we seldom see starlings up here.

A few minutes later, a red-tailed hawk swooped down, attacking one of the starlings. His arrival caused all the starlings to fly away with a great rush of wings, and the hawk chased after them, still intent on his victim. Whether he caught the starling I could not tell, but none of them returned and the snowbirds, titmice, cardinals, chickadees, nuthatches, blue jays, downy and red-bellied woodpeckers and wrens soon returned.

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