Changing of the guard

A few weeks ago I wrote about the robins in our trees, but we've had a changing of the guard here.  Yesterday I noticed that I hadn't seen a single robin for a week or so, and today I saw a bald eagle in a tree by the Iowa River where they congregate in the winter.  In fact, we've seen eagles around for a couple of weeks, but they're getting more and more common as they come in for the winter.  Such wonderful birds...

Birds & berries

There is a tree in our front yard that turns dark red and produces berries each fall. I don't know what kind it is, but there are a few others in the neighborhood; it seems to be a popular sort. When the berries get "just right" the trees are swarmed by robins and cedar waxwings (see the photo at right); it would be easy to conjecture that the berries have fermented and the trees have become a local bar. But the birds don't seem to fly drunkenly (I've seen that and it's a strange sight indeed!) so probably they're just feeding and getting ready to fly south.  The robins should have gone already, because we've had snow flurries and it's gotten well below freezing.  But winter is close and we'll lose them all too soon now.

Our snake

Yesterday Rick and I saw a snake by the retaining wall in front of our house. It was a very small snake, probably just hatched this year, but I didn't recognize it (not that I have such a broad herpetological experience or anything). I took a photo (below) and looked it up online, and it seems to be a brown snake; Rick verified it with a better online reference. As we were looking at it, it crawled into the wall in a very small space between blocks. So now I guess we have a Resident Snake to help protect us from small insects.