Well, winter's here...

The end of December was really mild, but guess I didn't really expect that to last much longer... Snow and ice came in pretty quickly, and the temperature's been below zero the last few nights. I was hoping to do a night ritual around the time of the full moon (for the nice lighting), but wow, I'm not going to even try to compete with these types of temperatures! Letting the dog out for a few minutes is definitely enough.

The days are only a bit warmer now, and our bird feeders have been packed. Tons of different birds showing up, including a pair of cardinals, one female one male, who've been around the last few days. They've all been very fun to watch.

The turkeys have also made an appearance again! It's been a few months since they were last around. There was a pretty big group of them hanging around this afternoon. I wonder if the deer will be coming back around soon? There were a few last week, but they stayed back pretty far into the woods. Hopefully we'll have a bit of a longer winter this year, which will help with killing off high tick population, which has actually been killing off the deer and moose in this area due to the very short/mild winters we've had in recent years. I know a long and cold winter isn't what most people really want to deal with, but unfortunately the changes in the seasons has really been messing with the balance of local wildlife.