December is always a hectic month, and our wild winged neighbors are probably the last thing on your mind, but I challenge you and your family to take some time this month and give the birds in your neighborhood their own holiday treat. Every winter, my family takes an afternoon to be thankful for the wonderful and wild place we live in by decorating a tree in our yard for the song birds that call our woods home.    

Decorations can be as simple as peanut butter-covered pinecones or more complex, like bird seed cookie ornaments. Day-old bagels covered in bird seed and half an orange stuffed with suet and seeds make wonderful and well-appreciated ornaments. We string popcorn and dried fruit for a garland and usually top the tree with colorful dried ears of corn. You can also decorate with natural wools and strings--the birds may use them for nesting materials in the spring.

Now that the birds will be flocking to your yard, get out your binoculars and start identifying your bird visitors. If you have very young children, try crafting a pair of binoculars out of two paper tubes. My three-year-old loves her cardboard binoculars--no frustrating focusing, and she still feels like part of the action.  

You can also become a citizen scientist and contribute to the Christmas Bird Count (December 14-January 5), the Great Backyard Bird Count (February 14-17), or the Vermont Atlas of Life.

Now get outside and turn your yard into a gift for your winged neighbors!

Bird Cookies

Mix in a bowl by hand until crumbly:

Add:  

Add: 

Knead on a sheet of parchment paper.

Roll and cut out in any shape you desire, and don't forget to make a hole in the cookie if you want to string them on the tree.   

Place cookies on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake at 325° F for 15 minutes, or until the cookies are hard and are nicely browned.

by Bob Engel, Marlboro College Professor Emeritus of Biology and Environmental Science   

Weather is fascinating stuff. Just think about all the conversations you have about it. I suspect it's always been that way: "Look, Ork, bad weather! Much bright light and noise; back to cave."

Intense heat, gripping cold, icing, and strong winds all catch our attention. But big storms, I think, capture our imaginations. Many of them are hugely destructive, life-threatening, often inexplicable tirades from a usually benign and supportive planet that mostly treats us right.

Here in Vermont, we're just about to enter snow season, and our biggest snow-makers are also some of the largest and most destructive storms experienced by the East Coast. They're called Nor'easters, because that's the predominant direction of their winds. I readily accept that Vermont's worst storms are the relatively infrequent hurricanes that get away and head in our direction (Irene and Sandy are recent examples), but in terms of overall destruction, year after year, especially along the coast, Nor'easters take the cake.

We mostly just get a HEAP of snow, but from North Carolina to Nova Scotia, these storms' winds, storm surge, and precipitation can be very destructive. For that matter, in terms of their coverage, Nor'easters are usually much bigger than hurricanes. So what's their story?

We need to think globally to understand locally. Every place on Earth is affected by the global circulation driven by a sun that spends most of its energy on the tropics. The hot, overhead sun heats the ground and causes tropical air to rise (think thunderstorms), spread out, and then sink back to Earth (drier) at about thirty degrees north and south. This results in the great deserts on our planet. Some of that air rushes back toward the equator as the trade winds, and some spills north toward us. Because the Earth spins, moving air or water tends to veer to the right in the northern hemisphere. So we have westerly winds, and most of our weather comes from that direction. Further, some of that air is moving at great speed at high altitude (no frictional drag from the land). It's the jet stream, and it steers our storms. As we enter our winter, the whole global circulation moves to the south, and we get closer to the jet and the storm tracks that it generates.

In the winter, the jet stream flows differently than in the summer, often bending deeply south and then, just as abruptly, bending right back north. The cold lobe that results, sometimes engulfing the eastern third of the country, can extend all the way down to Florida. This is exactly the weather pattern that brews up several Nor'easters each year. (At the time of this writing, a mostly wet one, with a track right over us, is coming for the day before Thanksgiving.)

Picture the eastern edge of this jet pattern draped right along the East Coast. The air is cold on the western side of it and warm on the eastern. This temperature difference creates a pressure difference that can spawn a big storm, so most of our Nor'easters are born in Florida or right along the Carolina coast. (The warm Gulf Stream often makes for an even bigger storm.) Then the winter jet steers them north. Think of the times you've heard your weathercaster say, "What our precipitation will be and how much of it we get depends on the track of the storm." We can get a lot of snow, but the coast gets big waves, ferocious winds, and an often-destructive storm surge. I'll take the snow.