A New Year. January 2022

 I'm sitting here writing this at the beginning of a blizzard. There will be no January 2022 snakes. There hasn't been much of anything. It's been cold and shitty.

We did make it out on January 1st to begin our 2022 Bird Count, but it was very foggy and dismal and we only wound up with 7 birds before calling it a day. I mean, look at that.

Yes, Canada Goose was our first bird of the year. I didn't get many good shots that day, so I won't waste blog-space on them.

On January 8th, we were asked to walk the Wellfleet big beach at sunset. We did it out of obligation, but we knew we wouldn't see much wildlife. We got another pretty sunset, though.

We managed to make Brants our #8 bird, too.

No turtles (mercifully... it was about 19° after the sun went down) but we were very thorough anyway. This is Andrea dozing at Half-way Rock on the way back. Catch those winks while you can!

We didn't get outdoors again until January 18th when we decided to go to a local pond and look for a pair of Screech Owls that have made a home in a tree their home for a couple of years now. We had an idea where it was and decided to look in earnest. But it was only 23°, so it wasn't particularly comfortable. We added a few birds on the way to the area we sought. A saw a Ring-billed Gull and an American Coot slip on the ice. How can a Coot slip with those massive feet?

He is #11.

We had a rare instance of success... we found the right tree and got our #12, Eastern Screech Owl.

We were pleased, but cold, so we headed back to the car, keeping our eyes on the frozen pond. In the distance, about 200 yards away, I saw what I though might be a Greater Black-backed Gull, so I extended the zoom waaay out...

Ermmm... nope. Our #13 bird for 2022 turned out to be a Bald Eagle, munching on a Herring Gull (which I did not count). This picture was used on the Universal Hub website here. Pretty cool.

From there, we headed to the river but the shadows were getting long and the temperature was dropping. Still, we got to see hundreds and hundreds of Mute Swans and Canada Geese enjoying themselves. here's a triple Swan-butt pirouette.

This tired Ring-necked Duck was amusing... trying to catch a few Zs while his fellow water-fowl were being so noisy.

That's about it for our January. I did manage to net a Two-lined larvae in Worcester on the 22nd in a very icy stream. So, I guess we got one "herp".

I quickly returned it to the water and out of the 20° air.

That's it for January. It seems fair to say that 2022 will suck pretty bad again. Last year had very few great days and the year before wasn't much better. I really need to get back to Florida or Arizona for my mental well-being but I'm not sure that's going to happen again. Oh well... home cookin' will have to do and we do have a lot of wonderful animals here to observe. It could be worse.