News you can use

Natures lessons for man and birdHowdy Beaver

Natures lessons for man and bird

Howdy Beaver

Boy, oh boy, when it starts to snow, it really snows in the beautiful Bear Paws. It is like it is making up for the three years of little or no snow, and it is mostly all at once.

Well, gentle readers, that is not entirely true. Really, it snows and snows and snows, but there is no major amount at any time. It is like it knows how to snow, but it is too painful to do it heavily.

Having said that, don't get discouraged. There is more snow than we have seen at one time for several years. Area roads are drifted tightly shut in some areas and blowing snow has been a hazard for some weeks now.

Here is the weekly scenario. It snows. And it snows some more. It keeps that up for several days, getting cold, but not 20 below. More like 5 to 10 above during the day and 0 in the night. Then the winds come, and for a day or so there is a Klondike chinook. That makes many roads all but impassable. Then there is one day of more wind and maybe temperatures into the 40s. On that day, the snow settles some and roads become a little more passable. There is water running.

Then the very next day it gets cold and snows some more. All the water freezes to ice, and the snow keeps up for several more days. Not a lot of accumulation, maybe an inch a day, but three or four good days of that. Then another Klondike chinook, another warm day and another cold front.

What we can say about all that with certainty is that it is keeping county snowplows very busy, as well as making drifts on the north sides of mountains that are as high in some cases as the fir forests they lay close to.

That oldtimer we reported on a week or so ago said if there were still drifts on the mountains on the first day of stream fishing season, well, it was going to be a wet summer. With not much more snow and drifting than we have now, there will be drifts yet by that third weekend of May. So just maybe we will have a wet year for a change.

One thing we have noticed is that with all the snow and winds we have yet to hear a single grumble or complaint. As one lady in the bank told us the other day, "Each day it snows is just another day of job security." We know what she meant.

You should see the birds at our place. They are in love with the thistle seed. Unfortunately, there are only 20 or so holes in our thistle feeder, and yet scores of birds want the seed. You are not going to believe this, but we have seen it happen. The birds at the holes in the feeder, don't eat the seed, they just pluck seeds and more seeds out and scatter in the snow below the feeder and it feeds those scores of birds quickly. Who said birds don't share? The Good Lord taught them well.

 

Reader Comments(0)