The winter birds

The temperature is 11 degrees. It is cloudy and a little snow is drifting down. All of the usual winter birds have been here already. In winter more birds come to the feeders. In other seasons more kinds of birds come. We had a pastor at our church who said he was a "birder". He camped in a tent on cold, rainy spring days at state parks to look for birds. He spent his vacation in Panama to look for birds he had never seen before. I have a book by a naturalist birdwatcher. If he sees a bird, he goes to great lengths to follow it and plot its territory. He remembers where its nest is located. In winter he comes back, climbs the tree and takes the nest apart to see what it is made of. Once he found a nest packed full of seeds. (A deer mouse had taken it over for a storehouse he figured.) He counted all the seeds and there were hundreds of them. One little black seed he didn't recognize so he planted it and when it grew he knew it was the common ragweed seed. When I consider these birdwatchers, I hesitate to call myself one. On the other hand I know a woman who keeps a loaded 22 near her patio door. She shoots at the birds who "eat too much and keep the other birds away". I'm a better birdwatcher than that. I have six bird feeders or various sizes that I fill with sunflower seeds. I also have one thistle seed feeder, one suet feeder, and one feeder for a concotion I make of cornmeal, bacon grease, peanut butter and a little flour. In summer I add a nectar feeder for hummingbirds, one for orioles, and one that holds half an orange and a little can of grape jelly. When all the feeders are filled, I go in the house and make a cup of tea and sit in my chair by the window and watch them. If I see a bird outside I watch it too if it doesn't fly to far away. Each day I write down the birds I see. It isn't a really good scientific record, but looking back at it over the years does teach you much about bird life. The winter birds here in Roosevelt, Minnesota are pine and evening grosbeaks, hairy and downy woodpeckers,(I love to write that word. It's the double o, I think), blue jays, white breasted nuthatches,red polls, pine siskins,and chickadees which are my favorites. Red breasted nuthatches are around for awhile in December, but then they disappear and come back again about mid-March. Raptors come to the feeders, too, and scare all the others away. I'm not sure if they come for the smaller birds or for the mice and such who have tunnels under the snow to the feeders. Maybe they like both. I have seen a sharp-shinned hawk and a loggerhead shrike. I saw something briefly one day that I thought was some kind of falcon. Some years a little saw-whet owl has come late in the afternoon. A neighbor has seen it at his house too. They let me get quite close as I fill the feeders. I have been within three feet of one and looked into its eyes. There are ravens in the woods with the bigger trees and sometimes they fly over our yard. They seemed to have a communal roost in the big trees across the road from our mailbox for several years. About five o'clock in the afternoon they would gather in that woods with much squawking and flying in and out. One morning I watched two ravens flying in tandem, letting themselves drop, also together, and then fly back up one after the other. I've been reading a book by the seed counting guy about how animals in a harsh climate like our survive. Not too much is known about it, it seems, but if anyone can figure it out, he will.