A winter has descended on Austin unlike any I have seen in the (many) decades I have been here…<\/p>\n
The bird feeders have been well stocked (and millet-free<\/a>) since before the snow started falling, thanks to the fair and industrious Trudy. Although in the early afternoon Starlings scare everyone else away, in the morning the Lesser Goldfinches<\/a> own the place. They peck at the seeds in the feeders and pick up the jetsam strewn about on the snow covered ground. Every once in a while, a yellow and black flash will arrive, but mostly it’s the greyish\/greenish\/brownish females and juvenile males.<\/p>\n Trudy stands transfixed at the kitchen window watching them.<\/p>\n Down the street, there is a magnificent Possumhaw<\/a> near the curb. Sadly, ours is male and so produces no berries. This one down the street is decidedly female, and its berries have been untouched until recently.<\/p>\n I glanced that way yesterday in the morning after the five inches of snow fell overnight. There was a fury of activity: Cedar Waxwings<\/a> swooping in and swooping out, fluttering in the branches, frantically hopping on the ground where many red-orange berries were lying on the white snow. Today half of the berries were gone. Well gone in a sense, because strewn about on the snow- and ice-covered street and yards of four nearby houses was evidence (shall we say) of the berries that used to be.<\/p>\n There is a massive Live Oak<\/a> on Old Fredricksberg Road just where the hill begins. <\/p>\n It lost a limb last night as the freezing rain coated the trees. This tree in particular is struggling since it is between the street (which must have taken half its rootball) and a sidewalk (which was poured recently as likely damaged the other half). Its canopy is thinning. The Ball Moss<\/a> is moving in.<\/p>\n Covered in ice, the weight of all that ball moss must have been tremendous. A large limb had crashed onto the street overnight. The ice-covered branches and twigs shattered as it hit the pavement. It was no longer so much an oak limb as a pile of ice shards, broken off bark, kindling, and piles of frozen ball moss.<\/p>\n It took about 20 minutes to move the mess out of the road. Thanks to Pete who pulled over to help move the huge main branch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A winter has descended on Austin unlike any I have seen in the (many) decades I have been here… 1. Finches and Birdseed The bird feeders have been well stocked (and millet-free) since before the snow started falling, thanks to the fair and industrious Trudy. Although in the early afternoon Starlings scare everyone else away, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5889"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5889"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5891,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5889\/revisions\/5891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}2. Waxwings and Possumhaw<\/h3>\n
3. Oak and Moss<\/h3>\n