A Beautiful Snowfall

     Snow fell most of the day in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania on February 9, 2016.  It was a heavy, wet snowfall, the kind that can be packed into snowballs and snow people.  Sometimes, big, lovely flakes floated to the ground, where they nestled gently among their frosty fellows.  The ground was covered with about five inches of new, clean snow and wind plastered snow onto one side of every tree.  Every tall weed, every bare, deciduous twig and limb on trees and shrubbery, and every needled bough was covered with wet snow, making beautiful scenery that was new and fresh.  And the trees stood tall and silhouetted before a blending of snow on the ground, and in the air, and thick fog, making them the more striking.
     I drove through suburban areas and farmland to see what birds were visible in spite of the snow.  I saw three groups of mourning doves among the fields, one huddled on a few deciduous trees in a hedgerow, another hunkered quietly on corn stubble in a harvested corn field and the third decorating a tall spruce tree where the needled limbs protected the doves from the wind.
     I saw a song sparrow hunched on top of a wood pile and another along a meadow brook bordered by snow-covered banks.  The doves and sparrows are permanent residents here, enduring whatever weather comes their way.
     About a half-dozen each of attractive American robins and eastern bluebirds were in a crab apple tree loaded with small fruits.  Those birds busily devoured some of the fruits as fast as they could before flying off into the storm to a sheltered place to rest and digest.
     I saw a few, small flocks of permanent resident Canada geese in harvested corn fields that were planted to winter rye last fall.  The stately geese were plucking the green shoots of the rye and shoveling up waste corn kernels from the snow.
     Gatherings of starlings, here and there, rapidly poked their beaks through the snow to the roots level of lawn grass and rye in the fields to eat seeds, grain and invertebrates.  I call starlings "grasspipers" because of that feeding action.
     Groups of sparrow-sized horned larks were again along plowed roadside shoulders to ingest seeds and tiny bits of stones.  Horned larks are the most abundant species of bird in Lancaster County cropland, which is apparent when the ground is covered with snow.  They consume grit to help grind the seeds they ate in their stomachs.   
     I saw a few pairs of majestic red-tailed hawks perched together in lone deciduous trees in the fields.  I see a lot of them these days because this is the red-tails' courting season.   And I saw clusters of rock pigeons huddled together on top of some silos to wait out the storm.
     After the snowfall, the landscape is beautiful with a fresh carpet of clean snow, whether under gray skies or blue.  But I think blue skies with puffy, white and gray cumulus clouds, and bright sunshine makes the countryside more beautiful and cheery.  And the gray of deciduous trees and the green of coniferous ones are accentuated by the snow and sunlight.
     The alternately melting and refreezing of snow on trees and roofs, day after day, causes translucent and sparkling icicles that are pretty, but potentially dangerous when they fall.  Melting snow dribbles off sun-warmed objects, but refreezes at night, starting the formation of icicles.  Day after day, more melted snow drips down the icicles and freezes, causing those icy stalagtites to get longer and longer.
     After a snowfall, birds continue to search for food, but now particularly at bird feeders, along plowed roadsides and among berry-bearing vegetation.  And killdeer plovers and American pipits, both species of bare-ground fields, now catch invertebrates in the shallows along still-running brooks in sunny cow pastures.       
     Snow is dangerous and a pain to deal with, but it has its beauties, in itself, and in the plants and animals that live in it.  After we are done dealing with snow, we can sit back and enjoy its beauties.