Third Year Anniversary of The Daily Prep; Winter Walks and Winter Birds

Common but beautiful, gulls heed the floating ice.

Today is the third year anniversary of The Daily Prep.  Which means in academic terms, I am entering my senior year.  Most of the time I would rather not think about how many people now read this blog, but I do hope together we have had some cumulative impact on the zeitgeist.

Walking With Birds

Birding during the winter can take many forms.  It can be done passively, through feeders, and on dedicated trek.

Almost any coastal walking route across New England provides wonderful bird views.  I seldom bring a camera, but once in a while lug it along.

A Hooded Merganser

Empty Nest

At a quick glance it looks empty....

...But the longer one looks, the more one finds, such as this great blue heron.

How the Locals Dress in Winter

One of my favorite features in various birding apps is the ability to hear bird calls.

Feeders bring the birds to you.

We have experimented over the years with different kinds of food to attract a variety of species.  This downy woodpecker seems to spend as much time pecking at our house as on the feeders.

Playwright Arthur Miller feeds the birds at his Connecticut home.  (This and the next three photos were taken by my father)

Some of my most vivid memories as a child are of our many winter birding treks.   A lost shore bird on Cape Cod or snowy owls near Cape Ann often set in motion a chain reaction of phone calls (social networking pre-Twitter) between ornithologists, culminating in us driving several hours to an invariably cold destination.

One of our most frequent companions,  an exceptionally well regarded, and intrepid,  ornithologist....

...led us to places like the Cape back in the 70s.

You can just see our dark green Ford Country Squire against the building and my mother and I sticking close for warmth.