Seasons in transit

Well, effective today, we have our fingers crossed that the neighborhood bear has headed for hibernation. We've left the bird feeders up the past few nights and the only visitors we've noticed were a pair of flying squirrels (our camera's autofocus doesn't get along well with  the  glass in the walkout door). So far, so good.

nighttime visitors to the bird feeders

Photo by J. Harrington

Today the Better Half brought home a package of beef suet, which is now hanging from the deck railing in hopes of attracting our local pileated woodpecker, but not any bears. We caught a glimpse of a pileated a week or ten days ago as one briefly alighted in an oak tree behind the house. Downy and hairy woodpeckers, and an occasional red-bellied, are often satisfied with the sunflower seeds we use to fill the feeders. Not until the consistently cold weather arrives, and we put out suet, will a pileated show up with any regularity. So, today we're enjoying one more sign that autumn is slipping into winter.

pileated woodpecker on suet feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

If the extended weather forecast is accurate, for the next week or so we'll get to enjoy yet another "spring thaw" that may leave us once again with bare ground and concerns about the likelihood of a white Christmas in our North Country.

How Is It That the Snow

By Robert Haight

How is it that the snow  

amplifies the silence,  

slathers the black bark on limbs,  

heaps along the brush rows?  

Some deer have stood on their hind legs  

to pull the berries down.  

Now they are ghosts along the path,  

snow flecked with red wine stains.  

This silence in the timbers.  

A woodpecker on one of the trees  

taps out its story,  

stopping now and then in the lapse  

of one white moment into another.

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