It was raining when I went to school at 8:00 this morning. By 9:00 a.m. there were big "juicy" goosefeather-type snowflake clusters coming down. Needless to say, the kids were very excited! After yesterday's high temperature of 61 degrees (F), I didn't expect it to stick to the road, but at 10:30 the principal announced that school would be closing at 12:30 p.m. I couldn't wait to get home and try out my new snowflake photography experiment. Last week I bought 1/2-yard of black velvet and mounted it on a piece of cardboard so I can catch snowflakes. The good news is, the velvet worked beautifully, the bad news is the snow was very clumpy and there were no pretty flakes to photograph. :( I did notice
needles and
column snowflakes (see pho
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to). These kinds of flakes form when the air temperature in the clouds is 28 degrees or above. The pretty
dendrite and
plate snowflakes form at temperatures around 5 degrees. I hope we will get more snow tomorrow so I can try this again!
Since the snowflake photos were not what I was hoping for, I went inside and attached my camera to my spotting scope and took the camera to the basement where I could get next to the window. The kids are not the only little "critters" that go nuts when it snows, the
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birds were all over the feeder and the ground below it! There were numerous Cardinals, Mourning Doves, Song Sparrows, White-breasted Nuthatches, Black-capped Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, Carolina Wrens, Goldfinches, Towhees, a Brown Creeper, Downy Woodpeckers, Red-breasted Woodpeckers, and even a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker! It was interesting to see some of the birds eating snow from the branches.
Male Cardinal
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Chickadee (l) and male Red-bellied Woodpecker (r)
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Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker (l)
Carolina Wren (r)
Later I tried to get photos of a flock of Cedar Waxwings in my neighbors' yard, but they were either too far away up in the top of the tree or they were in bad light.
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