Lion, Lamb, whatever.

Remember how I said the Redpolls and Evening Grosbeaks were thinning out? I was wrong. There seem to be more around the feeders than at any time during the winter. This article (Tons of Snow Test a Place Where Cold Is No Stranger) may go a long way to explaining that. They just do not want to pass through Ottawa. While I haven’t spotted any birds with miniature radio packs so they can contact their northern relatives, I can imagine a conversation:

“Hey Charlie, what are the conditions like on the home front?”

“Forget about it Ralphie. If you’ve got a source of food, stay where you are. It’s nothing but white for as far as the eye can see up here right now and there’s more on the way! Give it to the middle of April or later before you even think of moving north.”

Ottawa, Canada:

People here are divided between those longing for a few more inches of snow to set a record and others who think the 14 feet that has already landed, and mostly lingered, is more than enough.
…

…were hoping for another seven inches of snow. That would break the record from the winter of 1970-71, which meteorologists have called a thousand-year event.

This “thousand-year event” they talk about, I don’t think it means what they think it means. Either that or a thousand years isn’t quite as long as it used to be.

There has been no doubt about breaking snowfall records in Quebec City. Its snowfall level, 460 centimeters, or 15 feet, long ago surpassed a 45-year record.
Mr. Phillips, at the weather service, believes it is the ubiquity of the snowfall that accounts for the depth of people’s distress. A visible amount of snow has fallen two of every three days here since Dec. 1, he said.

I’ve been saying as much about the snowfalls that occurred every 3 to 4 days here at the Aerie. None was so large as to be a back breaker unto itself, but the cumulative effect of one after the other got quite depressing. And if it weren’t for the interspersed thaws and rainstorms to wash it all away, the actual amount of snow would have been impressive.

Today, tonight and tomorrow the Aerie will be the recipient of a fortuitous shift in the snow line. Instead of snow, we are to have 1.5-1.75 inches of rainfall. Nearby Elmira had already recorded over 3 inches of precipitation in the month of March as of Saturday.