Winter Feeding Frenzy

[yourlibrarian]

We were supposed to get 2-4 inches of snow today but instead it wasn't much more than what you see here. For about an hour we did get some steady snow but this mostly just made the birds ravenous. We filled these food plates twice today and they were cleaned out within an hour. The second time I had barely closed the door when the first birds popped up. Soon after there were about twice the number you see here -- the balcony looked like a dark mass of bouncing bodies. I never could get a big group again though because getting close enough to the door for a photo meant they flew off.

You can see more birds in the bush below our balcony (through the bottom of the railing). They tend to hang out there whenever we come out or when they're hiding out until the next flutter up to the dish.



In past years we've noticed that either there are two muskrat couples in our lake or just one (and the extra two we saw might have been adolescent children). But we don't often see them together. In the past week we've seen both, sometimes side by side at the ice opening, diving for algae.





Although we've sometimes seen them gathering grass in the summer, this is the first time we've seen them with piles of greens from the lake. They are busy all day long eating, which I guess isn't surprising since this likely isn't the most nutritious of diets.