Nome’s winter birds and how they survive

Nome’s winter birds and how they survive

By Kate Persons Recently, it was -12°F at Banner Creek in the dim light of late morning. Out the window, three chickadees flitted and bounced energetically through the willows, eating and caching seeds from our feeder. A little later, out another window, a dipper popped in and out of a small open hole in the Nome River, from frigid water into even colder air, perching briefly on the ice edge. It seems miraculous that these and other small birds…