Rob and the Animals: January Blahs

How's everyone doing (whoever may still be catching my random blogs)?

It's been pretty blah here this past month. Dark and dreary sums up January around our area. I think we've had 3 days with some sort of sunshine and not a full day of it either. Sure the spring like temperatures are nice in a way but the rain and cloudy skies just drain and depress me. Our backyard has suffered with this mild weather. Odd to hear male northern cardinals belt out their spring song just after Christmas, and the robins soon followed with theirs. These "bird tunes" are usually a treat for me in mid-February as we are two thirds of the way out of the winter season. They won't be nearly as special since I have heard a fair amount of them already.

Our visiting eastern screech owl has been MIA most of the month. Through the end of 2022, he was here 25 of the last 53 days. In the first 25 days of the new year, he has been here for 4 of them. It is clear to me that we are his cold crappy weather day roost. I've predicted his last 2 visits just by the weather. We are supposed to get about 20 cms of snow this afternoon and through the night; so I am betting he will be back tomorrow. Here he is late one afternoon watching the birds in the holly bush below.

Early in the winter our doghouse behind the shed was getting some tenants. An opossum had been using the house and it would appear some days a skunk shared it with him. Then as winter took a break from us, the animals stopped using the house. I set the camera up down there some nights to keep up on the activity.

I just deleted a lot of the trail cam photos, which had both of the animals in the house on the same early morning, so you will have to take my word for this.

We're delighted to be seeing an eastern cottontail rabbit around the backyard some days. It has been a couple years since we last saw one.

Here he is from this morning. Great camouflage! Maybe he has been around more and I've not been seeing him? Can you spot him?

I haven't been out for many walks this past month. The few I have been on have been void of anything cool and unique to share. The owl sightings this winter have been nil. All my usually good for a random sighting every winter haven't had any owls. I recon I need to expand my searches elsewhere and probably will in February.

Snowy owl sightings on my way home from work really haven't been a thing either this winter. I had a few encounters before Christmas and then nothing except for one night last week where I had 2 snowys about 500 ft from each other. One was on a highway sign in between the east and west bound lanes; the other was on a service road off the highway and I made my way over to have a look at him since I hadn't seen one in over a month. I wished I had my camera with me as the owl was rather relaxed about my presence down on the street below him and he just sat up on the lamp post, mostly looking elsewhere, perhaps out to his friend on the highway or maybe the field across the highway. I watched him for many minutes before getting out of the car to try and take a picture of him with my phone and even putting it up to my binoculars for a closer view.

Here is my view of the owl from the street.