A Cold Greeting from Iowa.......

Yesterday's shot of one of my cardinals enjoying the black sunflower seeds.  We had about 7 inches of snow since I last blogged and the feeders are all covered with snow.  It was very cold early morning and it is about -9.5 degrees F.  right now.  It seemed too cold to deal with the feeder situation so I took out on inverted plastic lids mounds of seed.  I just set them on top of the snow for now and will go out and clear the snow later.  It isn't going to warm up much bu maybe a few less negative degrees and I can go out and clear them.

The plastic lids of seed are a real hit right now as I have seen two cardinals male and one female cardinal.  A bluejay came by but he didn't like the looks of me in the window. I have a nuthatch and a lot of woodpeckers this morning showing up for breakfast. I have one suet cake that is almost gone after all the feeding the past two days.

The resulting tree tipping over allowed me to go ahead and hold it up with one hand and remove the ornaments with the other. My wife thought I had planned it this way but no I wanted to get the weight off of the tree and I wanted to get the tree away from the area.  My wife helped me box them up so I could put them in storage.  The tree has been put away but will have to be repaired at its base before I put it up again next  year. I started counting and thought I didn't really want to know exact count.  There were 50 plus on the one side so I figure there were over a 100 on the tree. It may be time for a bigger tree.

I get the birds confused when they hang independently away from each other but I now know which ones are which.  A swan a swimming is at the bottom and the French hen is above it. The top one is actually a dove, not a partridge and the partridge is the one to the right of it.  Then the next one is a part of the geese a laying.

The two trains are packed up in the box and are upstairs.  I don't display all of the small train.  So I need to put the stray extras now into this box.

Someday I would like to display them on shelves but that doesn't seem to be a part of my life's plan right now Getting them all into one box in a good storage box is the best I can do.  I do have a windup tin train that I need to get place in a container of its own.

It is very cold and the snow from yesterday had the sparrows in a nervous frenzy to find food.  This is yesterday's photo and once I get the feeders cleared it will look like this again today.   Right now I am watching squirrels chasing each other as if they are having territorial fights to get to this feeder.  We see squirrels run down a tree trunk and drop to the ground normally but I have never seen them jump into the snow.  The snow just flies out like an explosion.

It will be a good day to do nothing.  I have small things to do but nothing too difficult.  Eating  Amish bread that was given to us and drinking tea and coffee seems to be high on my list today.  I can shoot photos of the birds off and on all day and staying warm will be the goal.

I hope all of you who are not use to the Siberian express will be able to stay in today.  Minnesota bloggers know the cold well and those from Ohio, Indiana and Iowa get their fair share of blistering cold winds.  But those of you in the warmer states will probably have to wear coats today.  Be careful out there and thanks for stopping by today.