The Color of the Cold

The sun is sliding slowly nearer, floating up from below the horizon and slicing the sky like an orange......or maybe a really cold, frozen, peach. 

These very cold days are events of great beauty, if equally intense discomfort.

Such colors! Especially at the bookends of the days.

Lyker's Pond, good birding in all seasons

Raw blue and turquoise. Oranges and golden lights that defy description.

The evenings are equal to the dawns, like a rewind of the emerging beauty, folding the flaming tents and tucking them below the rim of the earth. 

We went out early yesterday, as Liz didn't need our car...no school, the bus does not seem to be exactly Peggy-friendly..... and although we saw few birds, every single vista of frost rimed farms and steaming chimneys, cows' breath pluming, snow sparkling, made the trip amazing. Like a slide show spectacle of wonder. 

Same pond, different day, facing in the other direction

A short run for owls in the late afternoon was similarly fruitless, but at least equally gorgeous.

I am ever so thankful for birding even when we don't find birds. It gets me out. It keeps me watching. It gives me a reason to go, when my entire instinct in winter is to hibernate like a good, fat bear, and wait for seasons a bit more to my liking weather-wise.
 

Blue Jay soaking up the morning sun.
There were 22 in one tree and more flying in as we watched