Snow in the City

We had our first real snow of the season beginning this past Tuesday. I work in an 11-story office building that looks across a highway off-ramp to another office building, with a few sparse landscape trees planted alongside it. My friend Ginny called to tell me there was a hawk in one of the trees. I quickly ran to the window and sure enough, there was a large bird sitting very close to the trunk on one of the trees. It looked to me like an immature red-tailed hawk, and our mutual friend Lori who's a serious birder was called in with her binoculars and confirmed the ID. It was really remarkable seeing this large (about 20-24 inches tall) brown and white bird sitting in a tree, with snow falling all around her (just guessing this was a female because female red tails tend to be larger than the males). The bird looked to be bigger around than the trunk of the tree she was sitting next to. She mostly had her head tucked under one wing, but then would occasionally look up and around. Out of the corner of my field of vision i saw movement and realized that quite a few people in the building across the street were coming to their windows to look at the hawk, too. After about 20 minutes she was gone, flying off into the steadily falling snow. Lovely glimpse of the wild in the city!

I didn't go in to work on Wednesday, not so much because of the snow but because of the inch or so of freezing rain/sleet that fell on top of it. I telecommuted on Wednesday instead of Friday...it was nice not having to deal with the potentially slippery roads and still have a productive day at work. I had filled the feeder Tuesday night and Wednesday there was a non-stop stream of house finches, cardinals, chickadees, tufted titmice, juncoes, blue jays, and mourning doves--all of our winter regulars--flying back and forth to the feeder. (And the thanks they gave me was that whoever had been perching in the apple tree above my car pooped all over it *g*.)

It was pretty funny hearing our President teasing about Washington's response to the snow. The smallest amount of snow seems to throw the city into a panic. It's not as if Washington doesn't have snow plows (as might be the case of cities further South). And the county where i live, about 50 miles west of the city, seems to close schools at the drop of a snowflake. The justification is that the northern part of the county is "mountainous" and it's not safe for the school buses. I don't know...we lived for two years in upstate New York with over 150 inches of snow each winter and only missed one day of school, and that was because of an ice storm. You notice that i didn't go in to work on Wednesday, however. I think i know how to drive in ice and snow (and have a fair amount of experience doing it, and now drive an all-wheel drive vehicle that's pretty capable) but it's all those other drivers out there who you have to watch out for! The guys in the big pickup trucks and four-wheel drive vehicles who think they can drive even faster than usual...the people in the little cars with the bald tires who have no idea how to drive in snow...the people who drive at 10 miles an hour endangering everyone else impatiently stacked up behind them... Anyhow, i was glad to avoid them!

And here's what the kitties have been up to. Gingy kneading the bed into shape before settling for the night (she's a regular bed companion now):

Fuzzy showing how much cat can fit into a half-bushel box on a cold winter's day:

And pirate Louie! When i adopted him, he was a small, slightly scruffy street kitten with a pirate's eye patch, an endearing swagger, and fabulous purr. I knew he needed a French-sounding name, and Louie is what i came up with. At some point, i noticed that he's got a little hole running through his eartip...it's as if he got snagged by a claw all the way through his ear and it healed but never grew back together. I figure that's where he used to wear his pirate earring! I was wearing hoop earrings Wednesday so while Louie was snuggling, i put one of my earrings on him. He's not crazy about things dangling from his ear, so i took a quick picture and then took the earring back off.