New Eat Local Post

I've just written about some of my favorite locally produced foods that are available at this time of year, on the Eat Local Just Food blog. The folks at Just Food Co-op are gearing up for the Winter Eat Local Challenge, taking place the first week of March. Participants aim to eat about 50% locally produced foods during the week -- and even in Minnesota in March they'll learn that that's not hard to do these days, which is part of the point of the challenge. Full disclosure: Just Food Co-op has recently been a client of the firm where I work and I've been very involved in that account, but my history of writing about local food issues, my involvement in their Eat Local blog, and my commitment to what Just Food stands for all predate any client relationship. Read my blog post here.

More Frosty Mornings

The heavy fog we had Friday and Saturday morning painted a fresh coat of thick frost over every twig and branch. We drove to the Missippippi to look for eagles on Saturday, and the frost followed us almost to the midday river and lingered even then in the shaded areas. Below are views looking roughly south and north on Highway 61 near Read's Landing. More about eagle-watching to come...

View Through Icicles

Above is the view from my upstairs bathroom window this morning. It isn't usual for large icicles like these to develop on the north side of the house , but the warmer temperatures, rain and freezing rain that we've experienced at times over the past couple of weeks have created perfect conditions for icicles. Unfortunately, their presence also suggests the possibility of ice dams on the roof which can lead to water back-up and infiltration through the shingles. Hopefully the new roofs most of us got following the big hailstorm of 2006 will be able to stand up to it.

The photo below was taken through the frost crystals that developed on the lower part of the storm window last night in the sharply colder temperatures (my desktop weather icon reads -7 F. as I write). What looks like the sun is actually a lamp on a utility pole in the backyard; its color is refracted (if that's the right word) through the frost and adds to the actual sunrise pink in the sky to give the appearance that the whole sky is glowing from an oddly-placed northeasterly sun. The lamp is barely visible through the central icicle in the top photo.

Squirrel-proof Feeder? Hah.

This supposedly squirrel-proof set-up is far from that when there is more than a foot of snow on the ground. I missed getting a shot of this squirrel moments earlier, straddling the gap with one hind foot on the cone and one on the bottom of the tube feeder.

Hoarfrosty Morning

Here are some photos I took this morning, on Maple St. near Sibley School and down by the riverfront. In places, the frost is an inch thick.

Hoarfrost January 19 2010

Cats Watching "The Life of Birds"

I try not to put tons of cute cat photos here, but when I discovered that they loved watching "The Life of Birds" I felt that was entirely appropriate for this birdwatching blog.

Fascinated by a canvasback duck.

Yes, that owl has a small rodent in its mouth.

The short video below shows Orion interacting with the screen. The light and sound aren't very good.

House Finch at Feeder

I took this photo of a house finch at one of our feeders on either Friday or Saturday. The zoom on my camera is broken (one or the other of certain unnamed adolescent cats knocked the camera off the desk, alas), but I got this shot by holding the camera to one side of my binoculars -- a technique sometimes called binscoping or digibinning. Not bad for a photo taken through a window, and a better focus than I often get with the point-and-shoot!

See more bird photography at Bird Photography Weekly!

Intrepid Squirrel

A brave squirrel came face-to-face with our cats today, albeit with a pane of glass between them. He spent several minutes looking through our front window, in between athletic feats that enabled him to snack for a while at both of our birdfeeders.

What had been a supposedly squirrel-proof feeder set-up proved no match for Stalwart Squirrel, now that we have more than a foot of snow on the ground and a handy ornamental deer for a launching pad. We had some amusing sights of him sliding down the pole and slipping off the squirrel-cone, but I expect it was no laughing matter for a hungry squirrel. I certainly don't mind sharing the bird food under these conditions.