A Year of Iowa Nature: Discovering Where We Live

February

February 14 CARDINALS STNorthern cardinals were generally uncommon in all northern states at the beginning of the last century. Habitat changes and bird feeders have likely contributed to their range expansion across the Canadian border. Everyone seems to enjoy these red finches, which readily respond to feeders filled with sunflower seeds. Cities, forested areas, and even marginal woodlands provide excellent habitat for cardinals and other winter finches. 16 DRIFTING SNOW STDry snowflakes are as light and soft as goose down. Add enough wind to move it around and you have a blizzard. The resulting snow is not quite the same after it has been moved and deposited leeward of a wind barrier. Unlike the soft fluffy snow that comes down, drifts can be nearly as hard as concrete. We are all familiar with snowdrifts; they come in every sort of shape and form. The surface itself can be scalloped, perfectly smooth, or deeply furrowed.Drive your car into a big deep drift and you may find it supported with the wheels off the ground. There are lots of historical records of livestock walking over fences on hard snow. Fences are often flattened or pushed over by the weight of the snow on the wires themselves. Depending on their depth or thickness, drifts, like the water of which they are composed , transmit light. Gradations of light can come through the knife-like ridges. 18 SNOW BUNTINGS STBlowing snow and freezing cold are just a daily occurrence for snow buntings and their frequent companions, horned larks and Lapland longspurs . We most often see them feeding on roadsides or in barren fields where the terrain is open and free of trees. When spring conditions begin to moderate, they head back north to nest in the tundra or on barren rocky environments, sharing habitat with Lapland longspurs. The breeding range of the horned lark overlaps the longspurs and buntings in the north but extends much farther south into farm fields of the Midwest. 20 RIME ICE STBlue and green are major earth colors.Green vegetation symbolizes our productive earth, which sustains life. Blue skies indicate bright sunlight, a cloudless day with heat and light from the sun. The blue color of the sky results from the scattering of short wavelengths of light off air molecules (primarily oxygen and nitrogen) in the atmosphere. This phenomenon is called Rayleigh scattering after Lord Rayleigh, a British physicist and mathematician . There is great comfort when we look up at an intensely blue sky. Rime ice-coated trees in morning light provide a striking contrast. 22 CEDAR WAXWINGS STCedar waxwings appear as if they just came from a beauty parlor, slick and well groomed with plumage in a state of perfection. They are social in all seasons, erratically moving about in small or large groups. I have observed them eating petals of flowering apple trees in late spring,which may be a source of vitamin C. They generally are considered fruiteaters, feeding on juniper berries (from red cedars), crab apples, high bush cranberries, and a wide variety of ornamentals that produce edible fruits. In late winter they seem to relish old crab apples and apples that are rotten and fermented. There are even records of inebriated waxwings unable to fly. ...