12-21-2025 11:07pm

Bitter Cold and a Blanket of Snow

Beth Callahan Editor

Nature Close to Home and Ohio Certified Volunteer Naturalist Dave Woehr shares monthly naturalist stories.

LEBANON, OH -- OK. Mother Nature has made her point. It’s December and the weather is allowed to turn cold and snowy. But I’m not used to it like I was when I was a youngster growing up in northern Indiana and Erie, Pennsylvania.

It has been near zero degrees a few mornings lately around here, and I’ve already had to run the snow blower twice. Last year I only had to run it once. Some years I don’t fire it up at all. Coping with winter weather isn’t as fun as it used to be – at least for a guy my age. But, I’m trying to look at the bright side. I tell myself that spring is only four months away. And if I pay attention, I find that Mother Nature actually provides some reasons for me to enjoy winter just by looking out the window.

The trees and shrubs in the backyard are plastered with snow creating a postcard- pretty winter wonderland.

So far this December, I’ve observed 26 species of birds without leaving the house. Over the years I’ve seen as few as 24 and as many as 36 between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.

Most of these birds come to eat sunflower seed from my feeders. But a few are predatory birds that eat the birds that eat the sunflower seed. I try to discourage the squirrels that raid the feeders, but it seems to be a losing battle. I have to remind myself that they are part of the “backyard ecosystem,", too.

Sometimes I see a rabbit hopping around in the woods behind the house. Both times when I was recently using the snow blower, I scared the rabbit out from under one of my boxwood shrubs. On days that I don’t see him, I still know he has been around by the tracks he leaves in the snow.

A couple of days before the recent snow hit us I saw four deer in the backyard. This was a pleasant surprise because I hadn’t seen a deer in the yard for about three years. And the deer gun hunting season had just ended. As a matter of fact I haven’t been seeing many deer locally at all this year. Maybe they all went to West Virginia. My son reported that he drove from Lebanon to Mt. Orab and back this week and didn’t see a single deer in spite of the snow cover that would normally make them stand out like a sore thumb.

Anyway, I’ve convinced myself that even though I may not get out on a trail until spring I can still observe a bit of nature by watching out the windows while sitting by the fireplace and working crossword puzzles.