Day 40 - 9th February 2015 - River, Mallards, Hairy Woodpecker and Blue Jay

Going to be a long day, I'm up before 4:30 am, groan. It's cold again this morning, temperature is -13, a little snow has fallen again overnight, no stars and the moon is just a hazy orb behind clouds. It's Monday and the weekend is over. Time to get some work done. Need to do some manuscript reading and work on the wedding dress alterations. If all goes well, the bride may make it up for a fitting, then I could finish that off this week. Fingers crossed, another thing done off my list.
A little more wood in the basement, some housework, computer work. We took a drive down the road to check out the ducks in the river - Common Mergansers were too far away, but there were some Mallards, saw one Hooded Merganser up the road but it was too far as well. The feeders are busy, but mostly the regular visitors - Blue Jays, Mourning Doves, 1 Starling travels with the Blue Jays, 1 Junco and Chickadees. The Goldfinches and Redpolls didn't stay as long yesterday. The Woodpecker population is increasing and I heard the Pileated near by. A few snow flakes throughout the day.  Helped my friend Dorothy do some research, it's been a while since we've done genealogy together and it's a nice change for me to work on names that are not from this County and think outside of the box a bit. She was searching a British Home Child that had lived with her Great Grandparents. We were able to piece together some of her past as well as finding two of her siblings who came to Nova Scotia. They were children who came from England in 1906 and 1907.

Ice along the river bank.

The Mallards were huddled and resting on the ice. One has a little top notch - he used to be a domesticated variety but has spent too much time with the wild ones.

The Female Hairy Woodpecker will come in close to the house and feed from the Bird pie.

The river is pretty with the snow along the edges and a bit of ice.

Not a great shot - three Partridges (Ruffed Grouse) in this tree and the tree beside it had two.

Someone else likes the pie too, I counted 25 Blue Jays in the yard at one point.






Enjoy your day!