Song Sparrow in the Snow
Armchair Birding
In the winter, our sunroom becomes our favourite place to hang out. Not just because of the direction it faces and the sunlight, which is a great reason all by itself, but also because it is the room closest to our birdfeeders.
This has been a very open winter, with only two little shots of snow so far. As a result, while we have our usual 18 or so species of birds hanging about, we don’t see the big numbers of them – until it snows or gets stormy. We had a little burst of snow recently, and immediately our species went up to 20, but the numbers went up dramatically. We went from seeing a dozen or so goldfinches to maybe 50. We had dozens of juncos and dozens of sparrows instead of the 2 or 3 of each we usually see. And of course all that activity brought in the hawks – our sharp shinned and northern harrier resident hawks got very interested in the feeders all of a sudden!
Sitting in the sunroom watching all this becomes really entertaining, especially as one of the feeders is right under the windows, and so we can look almost nose to beak at many small birds. Armchair birding, and we get to see birds like this little Song Sparrow.
Some folks don’t like snow in winter, but I love it – we love to ski and snowshoe and love to take the dog for bounding walks in the snow. But the birds the snow brings in is perhaps just as much fun. Our dog, Finn, thinks so too – he’s sitting on a cushioned stool in the sunroom watching out the window right now!
