Today is one of my favorite type of winter days: perfect snow falling and sticking to the trees. The temperature was hovering around freezing so it was warm enough to be outside, as a matter of fact it was quite comfortable. The snow is enough to bring all the birds to the feeders so, I was torn. I wanted to go walking around outside, but I was also attracted to the idea of sitting with a warm cup of tea watching the feeder activity.

The birds at Mr. Neil's feeders were on a steady diet of black oilers and I brought over some of the good stuff: Sweet Tweets, a mix of sunflowers in and out of the shell, mixed nuts, pumpkin seeds and dried fruit as well as some Thistle and Chips (or Nyjer and Chips for purists) and goldfinches and juncoes went a little nuts. Speaking on Mr. Neil's feeders, some may recall back in January that Non Birding Bill had some suet feeder issues. None of us were sure how he could confuse suet with mole (make that very expensive mole from island of St. Lucia). Here is a photo, can you tell which is the suet and which is the mole?

The shorter darker substance on the left is the mole, the longer lighter tube is the suet plug. Now, when I picked up the mole I could tell right away by texture that it was not suet. I also noticed the chocolatey smell. NBB said that he doesn't sniff suet the way I do-- like a fine wine I'm about to gulp--hmp. I also noticed, the very hard consistency and asked, "How the heck did you get that into the log?" I always pop the suet plugs into the microwave for 10 to 20 seconds to soften them up a bit. All NBB would say was, "It wasn't easy." He wished he had microwaved it since then he would have smelled that it was chocolate. In fairness, they were both in the same drawer in the fridge and when you look in at them, they do sort of resemble each other.

So, for the record, here is mole:

And here is the suet:

And then here is the beautiful snow scene that I ended up tromping through: