In the midst of the Great White North’s shortest month, the Great Backyard Bird Count offered me a welcome reprive from February blahs. During the past four days, I spent hours scanning my yard, striding a backwoods road, and snowshoeing through parkland and forest, all in a quest for winter birds. Organized by Audubon and Cornell Lab of Ornithology in partnership with Bird Studies Canada, the Great Backyard Bird Count enlists the aid of bird lovers to document February bird numbers throughout North America.

I completed eight counts in total, beginning in the overcast calm of Friday morning, the lull before another Nova Scotia storm. Crows streamed across the sky and raided my compost heap. Pine siskins flocked into conifers to forage for seeds. Blue jays bullied dark-eyed juncos and black-capped chickadees away from the feeder in my yard. During two half-hour observations, I netted only five species.

The foreshadowed storm dumped dense, damp snow over northern Nova Scotia on Saturday. For an hour, I watched my yard during mid-morning, chalking up a single evening grosbeak in addition to the blue jays, juncos, and chickadees that visited our feeder. Then a huge, bald eagle flew above the meadow beyond the yard, its white head nearly invisible in the shroud of thick snow.

Brilliant sunshine yesterday encouraged me to complete a trio of observation periods. For the last, I explored our property on snowshoes in mid-afternoon, brushing past snow-laden conifer boughs and feeling the icy shiver of wind-blown snow dusting down onto my neck. Crows flew overhead, cawing brightly. Companies of black-capped chickadees foraged in deciduous and coniferous trees. A pair of pine siskins perched atop a spruce tree. I watched a red-breasted nuthatch spiral its way up a spruce trunk in its quest for insects. A golden-crowned kinglet flitted from branch to branch near the nuthatch, flicking its wings and dipping its head to give me a clear view of its stunningly gorgeous yellow-and scarlet-stirped crown.

After a clear night studded with crisp white stars, this morning brought a dawn temperature of -15°C. Small birds fluffed up their feathers as insulation against the cold. I added a flock of eight American goldfinches to my yard list and noted the regulars returning to the feeder.

After lunch, I snowshoed to our mailbox and walked our long access road, hoping to drum up a pileated woodpecker or ruffed grouse to add to my count list. Instead, I spotted another golden-crowned kinglet and junco, more crows and jays, and heard the voices of nuthatches and chickadees out of sight.

I logged a total of  ten species in my immediate surroundings during the weekend count. I also brought home cold-freshened lungs and winter-rosy cheeks. It was good.