We did the usual ski runs, and being the weekend, the slopes were very crowded and soon got icy. One of the small pleasures of skiing is sharing a chair lift with other skiers and riders. Sometimes it's difficult to get more than a grunt out of your fellow passengers, but others can be quite chatty. A guy today had been to the island of Islay a couple of years ago and had sampled and clearly enjoyed a lot of the whiskies there. He had left his two children at the ski school for the day so was now off the leash and going skiing in all the places he enjoyed.
We stopped again again at midday and went birding in the afternoon. Rik kindly texted through the score from the Calcutta Cup - how sweet to avenge our defeat of last year. It's the day before the Superbowl and that's all you hear about at the moment.
We went to somewhere called Fallen Leaf Lake in the afternoon. We'd tried and failed to find it in fading light on our day off. It was worth the walk and beautiful. We saw a small family party of Oregon Juncos and I pished in some cracking Red-breasted Nuthatches - it's remarkable how birds in N. America respond to this noise. The nuthatch sat on an exposed branch, calling just like a Zebra Finch at me and tapping on the wood.The weather forecast tonight said the weather system is going to break down and allow snow showers though to the Sierra Nevada, and probably high winds on the coast - that threaten the pelagic birding trip we've booked out of Monterey next Sunday.
