A little snow can make anything look better.
Despite it taking me an hour and a half to get home yesterday a little snow is always welcome. There was less than 2 inches and really it shouldnt have had any real impact on traffic if people around here didn't freak out if it so much as gets a touch frosty. And god knows they don'y know how to drive in it. There were those creeping at 20 mph on the interstate and those tearing along at 75 slamming on the brakes as they came up 2 inches off the back end of the panic striken. If we'd all done around 50 we would all have progressed happily. Enough moaning though.
Pictures instead. One of the pleasures is that the cold weather pushes birds into the yard and onto the pond.
Particularly welcome on the pond are the Hooded Mergansers (Lophodytes cucullatus). They only turn up when the cold drives them off the river but they are very striking when they do. The males have the russet breasts, the black and white wing stripes and the huge white crest on their black heads. The smaller females arent so brightly coloured but their russet crests are attractive too.
The Cormorants also come in from the river I wish the Pelicans had visited instead. I've never yet had a chance to get any Pelican pictures. I only ever see them when driving where I see from 2 or 3 up to a couple of dozen every day crossing the James River on the Monitor Merrimac Bridge Tunnel.
Back in the yard were the Downy Woodpeck, being difficult behind an obscuring branch.
And in the shrubs, a female Yellow Rumped Warbler.
Its still freezing so the snow might linger a little and give some more chances before we turn into a world of slush.
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