Our first appreciable snow

I started this post last weekend, but it's taken me all week to get 'er done. I was hanging out doing a little housework on Sat morning, and noticed a bird at the feeder. He(she) let me get up to about a foot away from this feeder with my camera.

From the markings on the wings, I'm guessing that this is a female woodpecker.

She was fixated on getting as much of this suet cake down her throat as possible. She totally ignored the seed feeder right next to it.

She didn't like it when my camera decided to flash at her, though.

We got about a half inch of snow. Enough to stick, but not quite enough to protect the plants.

We're about four feet short in the snow department this winter, with no relief in sight.

This is a view of our fishpond after it's been buttoned up for the winter. Yep, there's around 30 goldfish under that hatch at the left, swimming around very slowly in the 34 degree water. They seem to go into a psudo hibernation, with their metabolism slowing to a crawl. Sometimes they are fat and sassy when we open it up in the spring, sometimes they are skeletal. Either way, they recover in a few weeks, and spend the summer basking.