After the storm, Snow Buntings

It’s icy and cold this morning. I didn’t sleep much last night because the wind was howling, dropping ice chunks onto the neighbor’s mini-van. I woke up at about 1:00 in the morning. By 3:00, I got up and saw a beautiful crescent moon rising over East Gloucester. By 5:00, thinking that the sunrise would be good, I drifted back to sleep. At 7:00, I saw the sunrise from my warm bed. (Yup, I should have been out there, it was good.) I got up and started to salt the sidewalk and steps, warm up some of the frost in B’s car and try to shake off the cobwebs from the lack of sleep.

I don’t drink coffee. It makes my heart race and my hands shake. Who needs that? But this morning, I felt like eggs and toast.

While I was cooking breakfast this morning, I saw some chunky white fluffy birds about 50 yards out. With eggs in the pan and toast in the toaster, I risked the possibility of contributing to global warming by turning breakfast into charcoal, I grabbed the binoculars, still on the kitchen table from Friday, and took a look. I've never seen these birds before, and quite frankly, I was baffled. This was certainly a time to "shoot first and ask questions later".

It turns out that I had a flock of about six Snow Buntings. Cheery little fellows. Please forgive the over extended focal length, digital zoomed, backlit subject. I'm just tickled to have these little guys in the neighborhood and wanted to document the sighting.



I would be thrilled to tell you that this is a life bird, but I have seen them once before. I was driving across Wyoming one February after a snow storm back in 1992 and saw a flock fly up by the side of the highway. They have a very distinctive wing pattern in flight so I'm 80% confident on the call. This is the first time that I'm 100%.