We purchased a bird feeder to hang outside our trailer on the edge of the awning. It has been fun watching the birds and one particular squirrel. We also had some deer show up but they did leave the feeder alone.
We have had titmice, cardinals, lots of sparrows, chickadees, a black and white stripped woodpecker, and a bird that I haven't identified yet. I think that it may be an Easter Phoebe Flycatcher. Pictures follow.
And the squirrel.
We went up to Northern New York for Christmas. We had traveled through the above zero area and then waited until the next day to do the last two and a half hours. By the time we were ready to go on they had gotten the roads cleared and salted. We traveled through areas that had been experiencing freezing rain for a couple of days. The fields looked like ice skating rinks. What looked like frost on the trees was actually ice. It was very beautiful to look at. Due to ice, there were power lines down. We did loose power Sunday evening and got it back late the next afternoon just after our daughter and family arrived. The fireplace kept us warm.
One of our daughters and her family also came. They came a couple days later and went up and around the area so that they only had about an hour of bad roads.
I have never seen trees bend so far and not break. When the sun did finally come out, the ice glistened and was beautiful.
Things got so cold, gravity reversed itself.
We had a great Christmas. As our youngest granddaughter said, "I got everything I wanted and then some."
Some went sledding. We put a puzzle together, fixed Christmas dinner and shared it with six missionaries and a friend of our son and daughter-in-law, play some board games, and even used the hot tub.
The ex Venezuelan missionaries even spelled us girls in the kitchen and made a stable of that country for our lunch, arepas. Yum!
We didn't use our truck while we were there and had to thaw it out as it was encased in ice and snow layers. Thanks to auto exterior starting, we were able to thaw the doors enough to open them. We had to do this a couple times. We left with about four to five inches of ice on the canopy. We were afraid that it might come loose and hit someone behind us, but since it was below freezing all the way back, it didn't come loose. It just evaporated some from the wind. Here is what it looked like the next day before it warmed enough to come off. I should have taken a picture before we left.
We hope that you had a great Christmas too.
