You don’t really need a thermometer. If you want to know if it’s cold outside, just look at the birds.
If they’re round and appear to be about twice their normal size, it’s probably not because of that extra tin of Quality Street over the holidays. They just have their winter jacket on.
This is one of those things that usually makes me smile a bit. Puffy birds. Unlike us, they don’t have to run to the store and buy a new winter coat. They just fluff the one they have.
Birds don’t need to be reminded to zip their coats. The coats are attached. They just need to fluff them up a bit, trap a bit more air in between the various layers of feathers and they have an instant winter coat. While some also gather in large groups at night to help conserve heat, it’s not unusual during the day to see birds that look a tad overweight. They’re probably not. They’re more likely over-fluffed.
I’m not sure the birds really thought all this through before they started all this fluffing and puffing right in front of us. You can find many down filled items around to help keep us warm. So someone figured out that what works for birds would work for us. The down side is that we really only need the feathers, not the whole bird.
But seeing birds get all round and fluffy is just one thing I enjoy this time of year. I was noticing this yesterday. The chickadees and juncos seemed rounder than usual. And there was even a woodpecker that looked like it had put on a few pounds. It must be nice to have a built in down jacket.
Now if only we could figure out how to grow feathers.
