Still frozen

This must be a local record for the most consecutive hours below 32°F or 0°C.  The snow did not melted significantly in four days but that may be a blessing for the plants it has insulated.  But some were bent over and may not straighten when their load of snow is gone. 

Birds were still very hungry in their need to keep warm.  Song and white throated sparrows, blue jays, a male brown headed cowbird, titmice, Carolina wrens, pine and yellow rumped warblers, all came for Sunday brunch.  

At the dam outfall, I noticed a gull on the edge of the ice.  A pair of mallards and a couple of egrets joined it at the thin strip of ice-free water where the current flowed.  Later on, herons hung out under the bulkhead further upstream.  The newspaper reported the cold-stunned speckled trout were washing up on the banks of Lynnhaven tributaries, which may be what attracted the birds.  Still later, I saw the first Northern Shoveler of the season, a drake, also paddling in the streamlet at the edge of the ice. One heron almost landed on the duck which chased it off to a smaller patch of water.