Brrrr!

The temp when I woke up this morning was -11º so I decided to wait a while before heading to the park. Eventually it warmed up enough for a walk. When I arrived at the park it was 6º above zero and little did I know that this would be the high temp for the day! With these temps, the Ducks just barely had enough open water to fit on. I was happy to spot the white one again as I'd not seen him with the others in quite a while. As I rounded the southwest corner and headed north, there was nothing blocking the wind as I walked passed the ball fields. Going against the wind, my eye sockets actually began to hurt. I pulled and tightened my new winter face-hood until I could barely see anymore. I was expecting to see some Deer or Pheasants today but on the contrary it was quite an event just to see anything moving at all. The snow under my feat made an awful, loud squeaking sound in these temps so that was not helping either. Somewhere on the north side I paused for a few pics of this Downy Woodpecker who stayed relatively still despite my distance. For a while he just sat there motionless -making me think he was truly frozen. The only other thing I saw moving today was this Grey Squirrel on the south side. I first noticed him near a large hollow opening on one of the tall Cottonwoods trees by the Creek. It looked like maybe he'd just crawled out of there and was trying to soak up some some and warm up a bit. But on a day like today you can't even feel the warmth of the sunshine.