Almost at the stroke of the winter solstice on December 21, an Arctic cold blast chilled the Feather River country and most of America. Autumn had been beautiful with precious colored leaves lingering right into December in the California foothills, and I was sorry to see those visual delights fade away in the wake of an abrupt new season.

Just as in any season or condition, there are certain wonders of nature available if you look for them. Instead of cottonwood leaves it was a cold freeze, complete with frozen puddles with icy swirls and frost crystals embedded among the rocks.

I walked in the Oroville Wildlife Area to the cut-off creek that reminds me of my Missouri haunts of No Creek, and found a rim of ice edging out into the center open water kept iceless by breeze and beaver. Paths led out through the weeds and willows to tree sites where the beaver had been gnawing, and where there had been dangling yellow sycamore leaves a few weeks ago, all color was draped into the brown covering and lashed by ice and cold. "To fit the earth like a leather glove," as Robert Frost said.

I always start feeling sympathetic toward the wildlife when weather takes a turn of extremes. Beaver are adapted for cold weather and summer drought, able to forage in the thickets or even gather sticks under the ice and retreat into snug dens. But animals like non-hibernating birds are out in the open and exposed to whatever weather weirdness can be brewed in the cosmos and spewed over the land.

My concern for the birds was magnified at a Christmas party. I stepped away from the social clamor to watch the sun sink in the west over a cold, hazy looking landscape, and a flutter in the porch rafters revealed the tail-end of a flicker hunched into the gable, evidently taking refuge from the elements in a manmade structure. For much of the bird world, it is live as one can, and many species are not reluctant to take advantage of unnatural accommodations.

I wondered about that northern flicker and what prompted it to seek out the porch, and jam its head-end into the slight crevice to spend the night alone, possibly to be expelled into the terror of the night if the owner so decided. What could you do out there in the darkness with danger and adversity running rampant? Such dilemmas stirred my childhood in Missouri, and I would lay awake in my snug bed and listen to violent thunderstorms and icy winds pummel the planet. In the winter landscape I would struggle over snowdrifts with my sled full of bird feeds to reach the timber and its wild family, feeling I had to do something to save those that I cherished. Sometimes the severest weather takes its toll...but some, like the ingenious flicker, live on to maintain the species.

I worried about the Anna Hummingbirds after three days of freezing nights and cold days in Oroville. In the faint dawn a hummingbird was buzzing at the sugar-water feeder that my wife reliably tends--and the water was frozen! We hustled around to break the ice, an effort not lost to the hummingbird as it quickly buzzed back to take a sip of vital nourishment. Perhaps the stay-at-home Anna's wish they had migrated south like most hummingbird species do.

There certainly is a reason for birds to migrate. I wonder how many times water birds and insect eaters were forced to warmer climates before it became an instinct to flee ahead of inclement weather? The swallows and flycatchers and warblers flee to the south along with waterfowl, but there are exceptions that keep the bird lover on edge about their plights, and alert to nature variables. I was surprised when super birder Richard Redmond said the Butte County Christmas Bird Counts nearly always include a few tree swallows! How do those dainty birds manage when most insects are grounded? The return of the swallows is taken for granted at Mission San Juan Capistrano every spring. I also see black phoebes lingering along icy streams, and Feather River bluebirds are a winter certainty in contrast to Midwest bluebirds that always migrate.

Of course, there are the stay-at-home birds that tough out the winters, such as the colonies of quail and the durable juncos. Even in the harsh winters of Missouri, the woodlands are never without birds, since the bobwhites and cardinals and jays endure and adapt--and survive!

I am amused at the return of the sapsucker along the river near the Feather River Nature Center. The red-naped variety runs a "sap line" through various trees, and the hole-riddled almond tree on Native Plant Hill attests to the "woodpecker's" presence. It swoops in to check out the latest excavations, lapping up the ooze and any insects that might be adhered to the droplets. The rock wren also maintains a constant presence among the rocks, gleaning the crevices for spiders and dormant insects. The resident birds make a living!

At city bound Lake Merritt in Oakland, the winter waterfowl migrants return every year to rest in calm waters, and it is gratifying that a wild bird of the flyways will take advantage of a refuge and settle in among the mechanized members of a metropolis!

As dreadful as it seems for the bufflehead ducks and golden eye ducks and mergansers to sit out on that icy water, I know the Nature Designer provides for their ability to cope, and in that reassurance, I can prowl the riversides and enjoy the living bird's presence in every climatic condition. For the bird admirer and devotee, what would life be without the constant benediction provided by a feathered wonder able to thrill the senses and delight those sensitive to color and the wonder of life?

"If the bird has not preached to me, it has added

to the resources of my life, it has widened the

field of my interests, it has afforded me another

beautiful object to love, and has helped me

to feel more at home in the world."

--John Burroughs