Kaw Valley Almanac

Around dusk, many flocks of blackbirds find a safe place to alight in the upper reaches of cottonwoods, oaks, elms and other tall trees. You can see this dynamic play itself out across the state every year just past the winter solstice.

This immature hawk perched on a cedar limb is looking for an
rodent or stray bird for a quick meal. Judging from the number
of hawks on power line poles, fences and trees this time of
year, there is enough to live on.

”When I was a kid in the 1960s, most years, we’d be ice skating by now,” Ken Lassman writes in the latest Kaw Valley Almanac.

Cedar (actually juniper) boughs are easily harvested as a fragrant and popular indoor decoration to festoon a mantle, window sill, or even as an alternative Christmas tree. The blue berries are a favored food of many an overwintering bird, too.

Even though the least total daylight of the year occurs on the winter solstice, the earliest sunsets of the year occur this week, and they can be spectacular.

Winter flocks have come together. Concentrated further with each snow storm we get chickadees, cardinals, bluejays, juncos, nuthatches and titmouse; give yourself a ringside seat by putting out a birdfeeder this winter.

Trees and animals depend on each other for their mutual survival. Acorns, pictured here, have a protective package on the outside, allowing them to be safely transported, some eaten, some buried to sprout elsewhere.

”Blackbird” flocks can be seen any time of day this time of year, sometimes in tight blobs of shape shifting flocks called ”murmurations” like this one at the most common time to spot them, around dusk.

No, this isn’t a pile of sprouting chia seeds — it’s sporulating moss, stimulated by the recent rains.

Young oaks tend to turn redder than fully grown oaks this time of year, as is evidenced by this particularly red young red oak tree.

This is perfect walking weather not only for humans — dogs love it, too!

Just as trees and other perennial plants go dormant in the winter, maintaining their lives underground until spring, the sphinx moth caterpillar will persist as a pupa underground all winter, emerging as a moth in the spring.

Asters such as this silver aster continue to bloom white, lavender and purple as the primary remaining fall flower. The prairie grasses will continue to get richer in color.

The beautiful blue petals of the gentian are gracing some prairies this time of year.

Some people get confused between poison ivy and virginia creeper this time of year because their leaves both turn red. But virginia creeper has blue berries; poison ivy’s are white.