So, January rolls around and you can bet it’s gonna be chilly here in Stillwater. Snow days? Yeah, we get ‘em here and there, and this year was no different. We waved goodbye to last year with some cool days and even lucked out with a couple of snowfalls.
But before the cold really set in, we had a surprise visitor near our botanical garden one sunny afternoon—an armadillo! We were just heading back from campus when we spotted it. Quick as a flash, we dashed home to grab our camera, and lo and behold, it was still there when we got back. Seemed like it had no plans of wandering off into the woods anytime soon, just doing its thing.
Nine-banded Armadillo
This winter was rainier than some others. It’s not a surprise that we got several images with white skies from these gloomy days. Some winter rain is not bad after an particularly dry 2023. We would have loved some Winter Wrens too, but couldn’t find one. Meanwhile, our backyard squirrels didn’t mind getting soaked while out finding some last pecans still holding on to our pecan tree.
Backyard Fox Squirrel eating pecan
Other birds were also around looking for some dried fruits and seeds. The Goldfinch found some seeds, while the Downy Woodpecker said no thanks as she already had access to the tasty suet in our backyard feeders.
American Goldfinch
Downy Woodpecker waiting in line for the suet feeder.
It was fun watching this little Tufted Titmouse working around the leaves stuck in the webs of the fall webworm moths. The whole ecosystem around these webworm moths is fascinating to see. The caterpillars themselves often end up becoming food for the migrating cuckoos, but their web otherwise provides them a nice home. Pieces of the web are later used by some birds for nestbuilding. After a while when the leaves get stuck in the web, they almost look like nests themselves and insect eating birds hop around to pick insects stuck in there. However, this Titmouse had some other ideas. These birds often store seeds for future and this guy was just doing that, bringing in some seeds he collected from the feeder to store in this pile of leaves!
Tufted Titmouse after safely storing a seed in its secret collection
While most days were pretty routine, one weekend brought us a real treat… A whole bunch of cedar waxwings showed up, chowing down on berries like there was no tomorrow. They polished off most of the berries before disappearing in the blink of an eye.
Cedar Waxwing eating berries
Striking a pose!
More berries!
These birds may look like dull brown ones from a distance, but look closely, they have such beautiful intricate feather details!
Portrait of a Cedar Waxwing. Look at those red and yellow feathers!
The Waxwings arrived again the next day and started working on a different plant with some more semi-dried berries. These bushes are hard for us to get at eye level as our house sits on top of a hill and these plants are situated much lower. We figured that if we go down in search of better backgrounds and those picture perfect shots with Waxwings tossing the berries, we would most likely scare them away. So, we did the best we could get from that weird angle and let them eat without disturbance.
Waxwing on the same branch as one of the above photos. But this one has a completely different background (water body as opposed to dry grasses). When shooting with a telephoto lens, the background can completely change if you move just slightly.
The look as if they will choke when they gulp down the fruits!
Two more Waxwings
A final portrait from the day…
Our regular feathered friends kept us company. We even spotted a couple of Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, which aren’t exactly common in our backyard.
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, a rare visitor to our yard.
Even rarer! Our first Ladderback Woodpecker in OK.
The same day, we went out in search of Short-eared Owls and found a nice surprise. Another relatively rare woodpecker for us in this part of OK, a Ladder-backed Woodpecker! Some usual Loggerhead Shrikes and many many sparrows were there too.
Just another Harris’s Sparrow at golden hour on a golden plant.
Loggerhead Shrike with a lot to say.
The attempts to find some short-eared owls didn’t go quite as planned this year. We caught glimpses of a few, but never got the chance to get some clear photos. It also seemed like the raptor population overall was a bit low this time around with lower number of Harriers and Red-tailed Hawks.
However, we got some nice looks at a Merlin around sunset, and got a nice photo of a Short-eared Owl hunting over the prairie.
Merlin posing at sunset. Love these little falcons!
Short-eared Owl hunting at sunset
Pratyay loves the dried sunflower stalks at this place as photography subjects, and he spent some time getting different frames with silhouettes. If you move your focus back through this sunflowers, you will see the wind turbines in the distance. You will also notice several ways of producing energy at this spot with both oil pumpjacks and wind turbines everywhere. In an earlier blog we discussed the pros and cons of both of them when it comes to maintaining safe habitats for the birds.
Sunset hues
The wind turbines
Energy! We may have wind turbines and pumpjacks, but the energy on the wings of the harriers is unbeatable.
As it was getting dark and we decided to head back home, the Harriers were still flying around the wind turbines.
Two harriers chasing each other.
Then came the much-anticipated snow days. We woke up with some nice looking frost on the windows. It almost looked like a palm forest. It was fun to capture some close ups too.
Palm trees made of frost
A different view of the palm forest…
We called this one “Oceania”
Some more frost on the window
Couple of Juncos walking around during the snowfall
With campus closed and a gray sky overhead, we braved the cold to head out to the botanical garden in search of some sparrows. Pratyay was after some Fox Sparrows, which we haven’t photographed recently. It was freezing, like 3 degrees Fahrenheit freezing, but we toughed it out and managed to spot some Harris’s sparrows, White-throated sparrows, and Fox sparrows digging around for seeds.
Harris’s Sparrows seem to love our Botanic Garden!
A handsome Fox Sparrow. They look more beautiful in the snow.
We found this figurine somewhere on the snow covered ground… A Harris’s Sparrow thinking how to get some food on this cold day.
Finally found a bald patch with some seeds!
A White-throated Sparrow
Both the Harris’s and Fox Sparrows are pretty big ones with Harris’s being the largest North American sparrow species. They were all fluffed up in the cold, looking even bigger, trying to find small bald patches on the snow covered ground.
A Fox Sparrow (left) and an out of focus Harris’s Sparrow. The latter is the largest North American sparrow although the fluffed up Foxy looks much bigger here.
The Fox Sparrows often stay hidden, but come out to feed in the open when the ground is snow-covered. We were both happy to get some nice looks at these rufous friends.
We were happy to capture this typical behavior of Fox Sparrows to use the double scratch technique of foraging. They typically do this action of hopping and scratching with their feet to uncover food under leaf litter, but on this day, it was all about uncovering food under the snow.
A grumpy Harris’s Sparrow sitting among the red berries as it kept snowing…
Once we were thoroughly frozen to the bone and our hands felt like ice cubes, we called it a day and headed home… only to find a fluffy fox sparrow having a feast on the seeds we’d left out for the birds!
We found a Fox Sparrow back home too!
Motu, fat little Fox Sparrow
This was the first time we had a Fox Sparrow in our backyard. These sparrows are on the larger side, and he fluffed up even more in the cold weather and often looked like a fat little ball! We called him “Motu” as he ate and ate and ate… He came back again next day since the ground was still snow covered…. and he just sat and ate the seeds for a very long time. We took some of these photos through our glass door.
Motu visited us again the next day
There was no sign of Motu once the snow melted the day after. I imagine him being busy finding his food somewhere else these days, likely from a natural source, just double scratching on the dry leaf litter to uncover his snacks!
This January also happened to be our 10th wedding anniversary, and this time we had a new little gift… Our little Sreeja… now 9 month old. We had taken a photo last winter when we were expecting her. There was no plan to take a similar photo this year. But when we looked back at last year’s photo with us holding this little sweater (from Pratyay’s childhood), we thought we must now recreate the moment with a little human wrapped inside it. That led to the following image!
It was fun recreating a moment from one year ago
As we look forward to warmer days ahead, we’re itching to shake off our winter hibernation and get out exploring more with our little bee. Here’s to making the most of 2024!