It's very easy as a gardener, birder, and well as a human to write winter off. It's dark. It's cold. The flowers aren't blooming; the trees are bare, and many of our feathered friends have migrated.
All that said, each year, I begin my count anew. If you are a recent visitor to the blog, here's the short version. When we bought our home, there were very few plants in the yard. So I planted a bunch of native plants hoping to increase the ecological utility of the lawn, and as a measure I count how many different species of butterflies, birds, mammals, and reptiles / amphibians I see in the yard each year. On New Year's Day the count starts over.
Common Redpoll
The count always brightens winter up some. I think it's healthy to be reminded just how much life is still active in the cold. We've counted 17 different species of bird in our yard since January 1st. Three of which are winter migrants: Dark Eyed Junco, Pine Siskin, and Common Redpolls. They are a reminder that there are places colder and dark than the Wisconsin winter. (So count your blessings)
Pine Siskins
As I noted earlier this week, you can also identify the mammals skulking about your lawn too. So far our mammal count is up to four: Eastern Cottontail Rabbit, Eastern Gray Squirrel, Striped Skunk, and Virginia Opossum.
We typically see somewhere over 40 species of bird and 7 or so mammals in the yard through the course of the year. This means that after the first month of the year, we've probably seen close to a third of the birds we expect to see and half of the mammals, assuming this is a typical year. I'm hoping that this is a sign that this year's count will be better than typical.
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