Baby It's Cold Outside!

Twelve degrees at dawn here on Indigo Hill. Even the birds outside, clinging to our full feeders, looked pretty miserable. At least the sun is shining, giving the frost on the meadow weeds a beautiful sparkle.

Julie just shouted down to me from her studio that the adult male Cooper's hawk was back yesterday, trolling for careless mourning doves. It was a failed mission, but I'm sure he'll be back. Our modos are corn-fed after all.

It's about time for our flock of wild turkeys to start showing up under the pine clump where we scatter the cracked corn and mixed seed. We've had as many as 17 at once, but that was the winter following the 17-year locust hatch year, so the abundance of crunchy insects made for enhanced breeding success. Last year we had a group of three toms and another group of five or six hens almost every day. When the ground is covered with snow and ice, it's harder for the turkeys to scratch for food items in the leaf litter. I can imagine one of them saying, "Well, we could go over to that nice farm where they throw out the handfuls of corn."

And another replying: "Yeah, but they way the people inside the house look at us really creeps me out!"