Brrrrr @ three degrees and a wind chill of minus six this morning. I definitely have “fluffy birds” this morning. They are all puffed up allowing the air between their feathers to warm them up and keep them from freezing. Ms. Kate had a bunch of dinner rolls from the freezer that for what ever reason refused to rise. So, she went ahead and baked them and I tore them in to pieces and threw them out for the birds this morning. Now I have a whole bunch of different birds competing for them. They don’t seem to mind that the rolls didn’t rise.

I talked to daughter Lisa in North Carolina this morning. They had what the weather people are calling a “Winter Hurricane” go through their area, (it’s still going up the east coast) and dropped 2-4 inches of snow and ice on them. By winter standards elsewhere that isn’t all that bad. But North Carolina and those states are totally ill prepared to deal with that kind of weather since they get it so very seldom. She said the roads are terrible, especially any back roads and what does melt today will freeze on the roads tonight. We moved to North Carolina in January of 1988 to our new duty station at Pope AFB and they had two inches of snow and the girls were out of school for two weeks because of melt and re-freezing on the roads. What was amazing to us was that we had just left Massachusetts where we had two feet of snow in our yard and the kids were not missing a day of school.

I filled all of the sunflower seeed feeders last night and all but a couple of the bark-butter feeders. I ran out out of bark butter and a couple of other things. I knew I was getting low on some stuff but I didn’t stop at Wild Birds and Things yesterday while we were out. It’s not a problem though; they have plenty to eat. I also need to pick up another forty pound bag of sunflower seed. I think I need to declare my backyard a bird sanctuary so I can write off all of the food that I buy for them as a business expense. LOL At the moment I have a flock of Starlings here and you know how I feel about those guys. They are the nasty bullies of the neighborhood. They squawk and fight and peck at one another and at the other birds too. Once in a while a woodpecker or a Blue Jay will stand up and fight back but most of the time the Starlings win. They generally stay for about thirty minutes and them they move on. But with me having the only source of water now, they tend to stay around a little longer.

That is it for today. Stay warm and stay safe in this bone chilling cold. Take time to be thankful that you have a warm place to be. Peace.