I hope there isn’t a travel Day 11, but just in case, here’s my second favorite coyote encounter from back on January 28, 2022.

I still can’t see this pictures without imagining this dialog between them. “Who’s that, Dear?” “Oh, just some dude I met, Darling. He seems harmless enough.” “Well, so long has he’s respectful and keeps his distance, I suppose it’s okay, but you make the weirdest friends.” “It’s my natural animal magnetism. I can’t help it.” “Sure. You just keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile, where’s my breakfast?” “Okay, okay. I’ll get back to work. Now where did I see that rabbit?”

From the largest rodent to one of the smallest birds, here’s a winter wren trying to enjoy its frozen breakfast and then giving me a piece of its mind for butting in.

Let’s see if I can schedule this one correctly this time.

In any case, I sometimes have better luck getting picture of beaver in the winter than in summer, and here’s one example:

Hoodies are the only mergansers we see, and when the river starts freezing up, we can hope to catch some glimpses of common mergansers, such as this drake with four hens.

Once the ice forms on the river,

you might be surprised to see this year-round resident as well, but here’s a female belted kingfisher picture from the same day as the ice picture above.

Here’s a sight I don’t get to see everyday, even though they are year-round residents, a great blue heron in the snow.

Here an interesting one, if you haven’t seen it before, an American black duck, a drake by the looks of that yellow bill, hiding amongst the mallards.

One of my favorite parts of winter is the snow because it makes everything look nice. Here are a few of our year-round critters looking especially nice in the snow.

A male northern cardinal.

A female northern cardinal.

A mourning dove

And a red-tailed hawk

Buffleheads and hooded mergansers are nice, but how about this goldeneye drake? I can’t wait to see them again.

While I’m on the road, here’s another treat we might expect this coming winter. Sure, we see hooded mergansers from time to time, but we don’t often get to see them parked on the ice.