About that Glade Road broadwing

Our big, beautiful (and incredibly fast) hawk decided to grace me with a head-on dive last night, just as night had fallen.  Framed in the headlights, it bulleted toward the truck -- going so fast the only way I recognized it was by the white bands on its tail.  I take this as a good omen of change.

Wild-time

It is still wild enough in these parts to see wildlife here and there.  Chipmunks, squirrels, all manner of migratory birds, crows galore (more so than usual, it seems), other raptors (turkey buzzards, broadwings, barred owls), oppossums, racoons, red and grey foxes, a huge gang of wild pigs (which kept on moving, hosannah!), box turtles, doe deer and fawns, and in past two weeks, two mama wild turkeys with their respective broods but a few yards from the roads.  And today -- a baby black snake in the vegetable garden beds and a juvenile black bear loping slowly up the driveway.  It sniffed at the mint patch behind the house and then moved on the back woods.

Not yet seen this season:  The bobcats and the mountain lion.

The birds are baaaack ....

Now that Spring is officially Sprung, two harbingers of the Season are making their way back into the byways of this mountain region -- the Pileated Woodpecker and the Broadwing Hawk -- both magnificent beasts of the airways.  Looping, diving, soaring, usually right over the truck.

It is comforting to see nature naturally take its course here even as the rest of the world heads to meltdown.

White Christmas 2010

A white Christmas, 2010.

Daybreak, 12.25.10

Mid-afternoon, 12.25.10

The next day, 12.26, with 5=plus inches on ground.

First snow of season ...

'Tis the first snowfall of the 2010-11 season, about 2 inches so far this morning.  Pretty slushy, wet stuff.  Folks who know more about this than me say that we are in for five or six "snow days" this winter (based on the number of foggy days we experienced in August!)

Myself, I like the "woolly worm" prognosis. When the front tip of the worm is black and the back tip is black, too, (with the middle remaining brown in color), we are in for a cold winter at both beginning and end.

Of course, the National Weather Service sees things differently. We shall see.

Just before sunrise ...

For a very few brief seconds  before sunrise at 7:32 a.m. this morning, the rising sun illuminated a startling cornrow of fluffy clouds visible outside our windows.  Really a very pretty way to wake up.

Winter is coming ... to the mountains

In case anyone had forgotten, this was the scene on January 30 this year, when ice covered the snow (and mountain folks around here were without power for about 52 hours).  Predictions for this coming winter, based on woolly worm observations, old almanacs and the musings or old neighbors is that we're in for "seven snows" this winter.  Of course, the National Weather Service notes that we're in for an upcoming prolonged drought, with very little precipitation in coming months.  We shall see.

Footnotes:  What's with the woolly worms?  Here's how the predictions work.  If the worm is black at both ends, and brown in the middle, as they have been in recent weeks, we are in for a severe winter both at the beginning and end.  How does one know we're in for "seven snows?"  Well, because there were seven foggy/misty days in August, of course!