Crows cawing woke me up about thirty minutes after sunrise on this bitterly cold Friday the 13th. At eight o’clock, the temperature was -7°F, with a wind chill of about -20°F. It was the first day of the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC), an annual event that collects data on bird observations made by thousands of participants across the country and around the world.
This has been an old-fashioned cold and snowy winter. Utica has had fifteen days of sub-zero temperatures by mid-February. This is similar to last year, which was the coldest winter inabout twenty years.