BIRDS AND BEARS

Thursday, 8:30 AM.  35 degrees F, wind W, light with stronger gusts.  The sky is mostly clear with some haze.  The barometer is up at 30.09 in. and the humidity is 83%.  We had a brief flurry of stormy weather last night but only a few flakes remained in evidence this morning.  The sun is high and the snow is melting even if the temperatures are not much above freezing, being absorbed into the atmosphere without actually melting and running.  If it does melt all at once we will get significant flooding.
   There are lots of robins now, finding what they can to sustain themselves until the worms come up from the thawing earth.  The one pictured was rather reluctantly, I think, eating sumac  berries, a wildlife food of last resort (use the Blog search engine for more information on sumac).  Yesterday morning I heard the unmistakeable call of red winged blackbirds, which Peterson's describes as "a gurgling konk-laree," but I couldn't see them.  This morning Tina up on Tenth and Wilson told me they have been eating sunflower seeds at her feeder.
   I took our feeders down when we went on vacation and did not put them back up, thinking the bears would get them, but the first bear I have heard of was just seen a day or two ago up on the golf course.  Joan said she saw a

ROBIN ON SUMAC BUSH

SPRING MORNING

pair of tundra swans flying low and fast over the Bayfield harbor yesterday but I missed them.  I am glad I am not flying anywhere these days, as I would be infuriated by the artificial flight delays inflicted on the public by the FAA and the Administration, supposedly due to the "sequester," when the agency has a bigger budget than ever.