The News from Kenabeek

Well, we’ve finally had some winter. No real winter storms, but light snow on and off on many days since Christmas. We now have maybe six or eight inches on the ground, here “in the bush” where it doesn’t get blown around much. We are still quite light on snow for this time of year! Still not enough to snowshoe, and if we get an extended spell of very cold weather I will worry about my perennials – snow is good insulation, and there’s not much so far this year.

We’ve finally had some really cold weather – not nearly as cold as it usually gets in January, the heart of the winter, but down into the minus twenties (-10F) at night, for several days at a time, several times. One morning at dawn we had beautiful sun dogs. I had never seen these until I moved here so I assume they are a northern phenomenon. If anyone reads this and hasn’t heard of them, they are like pieces of rainbow, one on each side of the sun, a fair distance from it, and equidistant from each other. They are just long enough to barely see the arc, almost straight (maybe the length of the first joint of your thumb, held out against the sky). They can be quite pale, the colours barely visible, as the sun rises higher, but at dawn they make a brilliant red flare rising from the horizon on either side of the sun. I believe it’s a phenomenon involving ice crystals in the air.

On cold mornings the birds are much rounder – they fluff out their feathers, so that trapped air serves as insulation. On very cold mornings the chickadees and whiskeyjacks, which are round-bodied to begin with, become almost spherical. With close observation, I think a person could begin to tell the temperature by seeing how round the birds are!