LEARN ABOUT CREATURES

the other morning (though fyi, i always post things on the day they happened even if i write them later...though that is 'bad practice' but whatever, it's a story about squirrels.)

anyway, the other morning i was waiting for the bus. it had felt like it would rain the sky was so heavy, not a squirrel was stirring. after a few minutes, i finally saw 1 squirrel running down its tree. Then another one on a different tree with a mouthful of leaves going back up.

there are *always* squirrels out, so it was weird that with the weather change very few were running about. This made me wonder...do they hate rain? the snow was all melting, so maybe it was too wet for them.

i just do not know.

So after a long night of crazy winds, this morning there are solemn, oppressive clouds laid over the twin cities.

This reminds me of 2 important observations I have made. When the waters come back, so do sounds, and so do smells.

The sounds are winds, cars splashing puddles, trees wavering, chimes in the backyard. The birds seem to be equally noisy in winter and warmer days, so no big difference.

As for smells, I can't quite describe them. It isn't spring, and everything is still frozen, so nothing is rotting or growing. It's sort of just a background smell, and sometimes the smell of water.

The momentous volumes of winds shaking the trees last night made it a little hard to sleep. We get limitless winds, winds that sound like they go up very high. They sound like the shake the entire tree.

It's more evident to me here in Minnesota that winds do mean a change in the weather. For some reason, you can feel that the winds are rolling across landscapes. They always feel like a truck going through. The Artic winds feel like they came from the land of the polar bears. The summer thunderstorms feel like trainwrecks from the South.

this morning, in the frigid air, there were a whole bunch of chickadees hanging out in the trees near the bus stop. They had a few different calls, all of which I whistled back to them, and all of which I don't remember enough to describe. We've really got to get working on the audio recording learning here. :)

Can't believe it...finally saw the albino squirrel again. This time it was chasing another squirrel around a tree. I got out my camera right as the bus was coming and then the bus drove right in front of me. So sad.

This albino squirrel looked more haggard..older, wiser.

So, since it is 52 degrees today (well, now it says 48, whatever) and I went for a walk this is what I found:

I saw these spruce cones and was thinking to myself, "Oh I just love cones, I will take some home." But then I looked, and thought "Why are there so many of these??" and then I looked under the tree and there were hundreds and hundreds of them, all laying on top of the snow. Took some pictures, will post later.

Closer to home, I found another tinier spruce tree, with more cones underneath. I will have to see if there are any seeds in the cones. How on earth do the trees let go of all those cones when it warms up? That's just crazy.

I slept in this morning and woke up so groggy. Thought I must be delirous to see my thermometer saying it was 52 degrees out.

Went outside and it was indeed warmer and I did not need a coat. So I went for a little walk for the first time in quite a while.

The birds were only slightly louder.

I saw my first Longfellow birder, an older woman looking up into a tree.

And I also saw something with a spruce which I will write in a different post.

although it was very cold out, i saw two birds chasing each other in and out of trees. I am pretty sure these were the same birds making very high pitched sounds. There's a chance they were chickadees, but they were too far away to see. I thought I heard something that is the chickadee call, but really I have a hard time remembering their calls.

thinking about it -- it's possible that the high pitched sounds were alarms, and maybe the birds were fighting about something.

I have just noticed that all the buds that I have collected have changed colors and plumpness. These were all severed from their respective trees and bushes within the last few weeks/months. The colors have changed -- the reds have gone darker, the stems have collapsed.

Just shows how much water is still in the real, living buds...even if in some of the buds they are frozen slushies on the trees.