Naturally

 I stood where the wind often hits hard, but it had taken the day off.
 When snow falls, nature listens. I need to listen, too. If I can’t be quiet, what can I do? When it snows, I have three choices: shovel, make snow angels or listen. 
 A kind reader sent this quote from “Red Deer Runs in Darkness,” “It became obvious to me that nature has her own language. She speaks through the animals, the trees and the cool summer breeze. She whispers, ‘Embrace me.’ And I do.”
 I watched a red-breasted nuthatch fly into a feeder, grab a sunflower seed and leave quickly as if it had swiped the seed. Two pheasants and two rabbits fed under that bird feeder. It was below zero and they were hungry, so there was little fussing. They were a group. A group of rabbits has been called a bevy, bury, colony, down, drove, herd, husk, litter, nest, trace, trip and warren. Collective nouns for pheasants include bevy, bouquet, brace, creche, head, nide, nye, plume, plump, trip and warren. I could rightly call the mixed group a bevy, trip or warren. Later, a fox squirrel joined the group, but only for a short time. A collective noun for squirrels is a scurry and that’s what the squirrel did after being chased by a rooster pheasant. 
 There was another group moving through the yard on a cold and sunny day. It was a noisy group of starlings. The collective noun for that vociferous bunch is a chattering. They are often referred to as a murmuration because of the background murmur caused by the many wings of a flock beating in flight.
 I went indoors to thaw after a walk. I decided to delete a few of my overabundant herd of photos. I started with some Costa Rica pictures. I looked at photos of an eyelash pit viper, a small arboreal viper most active at night. It feeds on rodents, lizards, frogs, bats and birds. Its color varies—green, brown, brownish, grayish, pinkish, yellow, yellowish, white and more. It has small horn-shaped extensions on the supraocular scales (above the eyes). It’s named for these bristly scales that resemble hoods or eyelashes over its eyes. Another snake found in Costa Rica is the fer-de-lance, a highly venomous pit viper inhabiting the region from southern Mexico to northern South America, whose name means “spearhead” in French. It feeds on rats and other rodents, opossums, rabbits, frogs and geckos. It’s said to be the most dangerous snake in Central and South America, and causes more human deaths than any other American reptile. On average, a fer-de-lance injects 105 mg of venom in one bite, although a venom yield of up to 310 mg has been recorded while milking the snakes. The fatal dose for a human is 50 mg. It’s responsible for almost half of all snakebites in Costa Rica. However, even with its high venom yield and huge fangs (around 1 inch long in large females), the species has a low mortality rate of 1 to 2%. 
 I fed a handful of peanuts to the blue jays. Vanessa Sorensen wrote, “Though temper and crest May flare Striking beauty.” Feeding the birds is a Christmas gift to me. An ancient Italian proverb said, “A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.” One of the significant benefits of being a birder is that it gives me something to talk about besides the weather. 

Q&A

 Mark Sorenson of Hollandale saw a gray squirrel using the walnut in its mouth to bang on a window of Mark’s house. He wondered why. It might have been a Christmas gift for Mark, but I suspect the squirrel was looking for a place to cache food, in this case, a walnut.
 “Why are they called angleworms?” Angleworms are commonly called earthworms. The name originated because these common ground worms are a preferred bait used by anglers, a person fishing with an angle (a rod with a baited hook on a line) rather than a fisherman using a net. The angle of the hook makes an angler; from the Old English angul means “fishhook.” The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center said earthworms are native to the US but aren’t indigenous to some northern parts because the glaciers covering North America as far south as Illinois, Indiana and Ohio wiped out native earthworms. European settlers introduced earthworm species from Europe and Asia to North America in the 18th century; likely introduced unintentionally in ship ballasts or in the roots of imported plants.

Thanks for stopping by

  “We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand and melting like a snowflake. Let us use it before it is too late.”—Marie Beynon Lyons Ray.
 “Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more."—“How the Grinch Stole Christmas!”—Dr. Suess.
 Do good.

©️Al Batt 2022

The handsome male house finch named Snowy McSnowface. Photo by Al Batt

A superstition maintains that saying “rabbit rabbit” aloud before anything else on the first day of the month brings a month of good luck. Gilda Radner said “bunny, bunny” to ensure “laughter, love and peace” and FDR said “rabbits.” If you forget to say “rabbit, rabbit” the first thing, say "tibbar, tibbar"—“rabbit” backward. Warranty available for purchase.