A Land of Ice and Snow - Bird View

[yourlibrarian]

Some may remember that a while back I posted a set of pics about crows keeping one another from drinking spots on the ice. As it has gotten colder at night, more of the lake has frozen over, so that the icy edge is now extended.



Still, these crows were on the job of creating their own tiny ice holes, as seen in the last pic. The light was great for photos this day -- I included the third photo largely because it had turned the bird's legs silver.





The wind is currently howling by my window though it doesn't look so bad outside. But it's cold enough that this ice floe the ducks are on is a solid sheet covered in snow at the moment.

Comments

[chestnut_pod]

I always wonder how the cold doesn't hurt their poor feet!

[yourlibrarian]

Me too! I'll bet someone here knows though.

[cyprinella]

Mostly it's because there's relatively little flesh in their feet to hurt. Birds also have special arteries and veins that are very close to each other that do some neat heating and cooling tricks. More info: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/why-dont-birds-get-cold-feet/

[chestnut_pod]

That's fascinating -- thanks muchly for the link and your summary.

[shirebound]

These are great. It would be hard for me to ever see things like this!

[yourlibrarian]

Yay, glad to share!

[cmcmck]

They're such intelligent birds!

[yourlibrarian]

They are, wouldn't want to get on their bad side 😉

[sparowe]

I don't know how you feel about social media, so forgive me if this is out of line, but I'm a corvid group that would probably love to see these: https://www.facebook.com/groups/334799910063783 :)

[yourlibrarian]

Hi, no worries but I don't have a FB account. If you'd like to link this post to your group though, feel free!

[sparowe]

I don't know their rules on re-hosting, so I don't think I will--but I wanted to thank you for your very kind offer! :)

[dhampyresa]

Such pretty birdies!

[yourlibrarian]

They look so shiny!