winter wonderfand

[the_siobhan]

It's snowing in Toronto today. Which translates into gentle white flakes floating downward as I walk from the house to the bus stop, and frozen bullets that drill me viciously in the forehead when I trudge from the bus stop to work.

Google maps says the distance to my work place is only 9 km. Axel calls it "Grim Northern Lands" and swears that there are dragons on the maps. That 9k results in a temperature drop of 5 to 10 degrees. Part of that is probably due to the wide four-lane streets lined with huge parking lots where the wind shrieks down the uncleared sidewalks like a demon from the Norse vision of Hell. At home the streets are short and twisted, the houses are close together and surrounded by trees and the wind can never seem to get up any speed.

Yesterday when I was walking to the bus I could hear what sounded like a large group of crows shouting and flapping around. I finally got a vantage point where I could see what was causing such hysterics - a large raptor sitting high in a tree. It was too far away to tell exactly what species, but the profile was unmistakable. It was half-again as large as the corvids who were flapping ineffectually around it and it was completely ignoring their efforts to chase it off.

Neat.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/cincinnatus_c_/]

A couple of days ago L. happened to be looking up from the window at some pigeons on the edge of our roof when they all of a sudden exploded into the air and L. picked out a hawk sitting on top of a building up the street. I'm pretty sure there are a lot more birds of prey of several kinds around the city, and southern Ontario generally, than there were when I was a kid (though paying attention has something to do with it), and it seems like more every year. I guess we're still emerging from the age of DDT. So, some hopeful signs, at least.