Baby it's cold...

Sunrise over frozen slough east of Naicam. John Madsen photo

According to the TV weatherman, March 1 this year was the coldest beginning of the month since the record for cold was set in 1916! Hearing statistics like that certainly doesn't make me feel any warmer! The official first day of spring may be less than three weeks away, but the grim forecast says we will sit in this deep freeze at least until then! 

Looking out my kitchen window today, I see that Monday's blizzard and yesterday's wind have reshaped the landscape. John took this photo out the window this morning when the temperature was minus 34 and the windchill minus 42.

To console myself, I'm sharing another picture with you of the same wrought iron hook, here holding something much warmer - orange and black oriole sitting on an orange on a black hook.

Orioles love oranges! Margaret Madsen photo

Now isn't that better?

Why do you suppose orioles are attracted to the color orange? We have an oriole nectar feeder that is orange plastic and the very day we hung it on the front deck, an oriole visited.

Have you noticed that Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are attracted to the color red (matching their flashy bib)? And Hummingbird feeders have red, not orange, on them. Is this merely coincidence? The hummingbirds did drink from the oriole feeder and I've seen them grazing happily in my orange nasturtiums so who knows? I once read that insects, necessary for pollination, are attracted to the color yellow which might explain why so many flowers have yellow centres where the pollen and nectar are located.

The discussion of birds and color does open the question of a bird's vision. We all know that birds have much sharper vision than humans. I doubt that even the bionic man could see a mouse a mile away but raptors can. And did you know that mouse urine shows up in ultraviolet light and that certain raptors can see the ultraviolet dribble trails left by mice, and when they see a concentration of urine trails, they know where to watch for mouse activity.

Birds that are active during the day have two to five times as many color receptors (cones)  as humans. They also have oil droplets in their cones which apparently sharpens color reception and reduces glare. Nocturnal birds have more rods than cones for night vision. (Again my "trivia" comes from The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior put out by the National Audubon Society.)

I highly recommend The Sibley Guide for trivia lovers as well as bird enthusiasts. You can open any page and find fascinating trivia in the captions to Sibley's fantastic drawings. For example, page 323, illustration of mourning dove feeding young in nest. "For the first 10 days or so after columbid young hatch, the parents feed them 'crop milk,' a substance that is secreted by the wall of the crop."

Fascinating! When it's too cold to go out, there's nothing like a book for company and it looks like for the next few weeks, Sibley and I will be close friends!