(I wrote this 20 years ago, before I had a blog. With -40s on us again, it’s a good reminder of the old days, when these temperatures were more frequent.)

It was cold here in Fairbanks for the past couple of weeks—down around -40º for days. That is the temperature where the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales meet. And air that dense tends to hang around for a while when it’s in the neighborhood. With the proper clothes, this isn’t much to get worked up about. It’s too cold for skiing, but strolling around out in the crisp is actually fairly pleasant.

Normally at this time of year our bird feeder is packed with redpolls. They can usually be counted on to empty the thing daily, and we actually ration them so we don’t go through too many forty-pound bags of sunflower seed kernels.

But this year is dramatically different. They’re completely absent. They were scarce early in the winter, but I haven’t heard one for months. This absence became more and more puzzling as the normal late-January visits didn’t appear and the February and March hordes didn’t show either.

But then I realized that I hadn’t seen a single birch seed shadow all winter. These are common in normal years, when even a light breeze drops birch seed all over the snow.* A few years ago we had an astonishingly high birch seed year, but this year it looks like practically none were produced. And so I finally realized why we had no redpolls this winter. I am not sure what the cause is, but it is the first time in our 22 winters’ experience here that it’s occurred. We miss the little buggers.

* A five-year study published in 1972 found an average annual production in birch forest around Fairbanks of 23,303 seeds per square meter. This is why birch seed shadows are usually so visible all winter as these seeds periodically fall.

25 March update: Well, the redpolls read my post and sent a few emissaries. If I’d known things could work this way, I would have posted this in January. A small flock of four stopped by while we were eating lunch. Rose and I just started laughing. It’s amazing how excited you can get to see what’s usually an abundant bird.

With our heavy snowfalls this winter we’ve seen some marvelous sights in the ways it accumulates. I took a few pictures.
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We had a good dump of snow last week on top of rain (it should not rain here in January). Behind that weather system came normal cold—cold that felt abnormal because it’s been so warm this season.
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