Finally, White Christmas

 

Had an excellent turkey dinner, just the two of us, with squash and bread stuffing, mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts. Everything was ready to eat when I realized I forgot to cook up the cranberries.  Oh, well, there's tons of leftover turkey, I'll cook the cranberry sauce today.

The weather forecast was for snow all night so I was disappointed to wake up to a bare dusting of snow. But then it stared snowing in earnest so we went out for a winter wonderland walk in the creek valley,

Enough snow for a Patti to make a snow angel:

Santa was Good to us

 Santa was good to us.  He brought me this house elf. 

We got lots of attractive face masks and they fit much better than the ones I made.

I'll look very stylish on my weekly run to Save On Foods.

At breakfast we tucked into our traditional Schwäbisch Hutzelbrot:

Now back to cooking our turkey dinner.

Merry Christmas

 Merry Christmas from Connie and Leo!

We will be having our socially distant Christmas dinner at home.  It's a pity that the first time we are home in 20? years we can't congegrate with our friends and relatives but at least its low pressure with no long distance driving.  

Earlier this week we met our wilderness paddling friends outdoors around their firepit out at Timothy Lake and had a wiener roast.  They will at least have a white Christmas unlike us in town.

The cross-country ski trails opened yesterday.  Leo has already skied twice and I'll be getting up there today.

Christmas Bird Count

 

Crazy amount of water in the creek this winter and no ice.

On Sunday we did the Christmas Bird Count on our regular route down the upper creek valley. The weather was fabulous, the first sunny day we've had in weeks.

In the first 1/2 hour we saw 26 common goldeneye. That was a lot.

Some of the 26

But after that the birding went downhill.  There was very little activity.  We saw a few chickadees, the usual crows and ravens, mallards, an eagle, two red-tailed hawks.

We got to check out the repairs to the road by the sewage lagoons, which is usually out of bounds due to construction and slope instability.

New bridge by the sewage lagoons.

The sewage lagoons are usually fenced in but we were able to walk all around them.  Often there can be a hundred ducks in the lagoons but you have to climb up a hill to see in.  This year access was easy but thee were only 6 mallards in the ponds because the creek isn't frozen.

On the way out we climbed up a very steep tail.  It was horribly muddy and our mud-caked shoes had no traction.  I slipped and fell and got covered in mud.  At one point I was crawling on my knees.

Back at home I watched our feeder while Leo did another route in town where he got a photo of the first Anna's hummingbird ever seen on bird count day.

We've had a white-throated sparrow at our feeder for several weeks, one of two on the count.

Mission Road

 We've been walking out on Mission Road for a change of scenery.  Also no ice on the road and hardly any traffic.  Henry the dog was very interested in the cattle.

This little guy was trapped outside the fence.

Group photo:

Here Henry is dancing for his bacon treat:

It's December

 

We have the Christmas lights up the wreaths are on the doors and the Advent wreath is out.

We're still getting out walking every day. 

In the Dairy fields

 Trails are icy!

There's not much snow around here.

And there's hardly any birds hanging around Scout Island.

But we did see

Female Barrow's goldeneye

Female common goldeneye

Can you tell the difference?  The Barrow's has an orange bill vs. the mostly black bill of the  common goldeneye. Also their heads are different shapes.  Also the back of the Barrow's head is darker which can be seen clearly on these photos, but I doubt I could tell the difference in the field.

We've also seen this female northern harrier several times.

And there are two rusty blackbirds hanging around.

Not a great photo but you can see it's not pure black.

Leo says they used to be seen regularly here (in the 70s?) but I don't remember seeing any in the last 30 years.

We've had a lot of gray days while we wait for the lake to freeze up

Approaching Scout Island from Hwy 20 and the Cotton site.

but the blue sky did make an appearance one afternoon for this classic shot of Williams Lake from the Scout Island viewpoint.

Nice reflection on the developing ice.