Sunflowers in Winter
My wife is the sunflower fan in our family. She loves the way their cheerful sunny faces turn toward the kitchen window and smile across the yard every August morning.
My own love of sunflowers comes later — much later — in the year. It’s long past the endless weeks of weedy green reaching skyward, long past the slowly swelling flower heads, beyond even the many days of glistening autumn frost before I truly begin to appreciate the beauty of this magnificent plant.
It is not until its leaves are long gone and the corpse that remains stands head bowed and winter burned knee deep in snow that I once again fall deeply in love with the sunflower.
Please note that I am not insane nor am I completely alone. All of nature loves sunflowers in winter. Witness the daily parade of visitors if you doubt me.
Squirrels — native Red and alien Grey — come each day to raid the granaries hidden in the drooping flower heads. Black-capped Chickadees and Red-breasted Nuthatches dangle and bob as they struggle to free the sun-ripened seeds in the winter twilight.
Then comes the night shift. Those who live in bedroom communities and river valleys northwest of the city will occasionally spot Northern Flying Squirrels feasting on sunflower seeds deep into the frosty darkness.
Those not so lucky must content themselves with the neighbourhood rabbit who comes to clean up the tidbits the others have dropped to the ground.
My personal favourites are the woodpeckers. The Northern Flickers with their florescent red and yellow wing liners and their bold, manly moustaches arrive in October and stay through until spring. Small Downy and larger Hairy Woodpeckers come to peck at sunflower corpses just often enough to add some excitement to dull winter days.
My wife enjoys them too, mind you. She is not averse to winter woodpeckers. But as our endless winter drones on, she begins to pine for those late August mornings when she and her sunflowers shared the morning with sparkling dew and flitting families of bright yellow goldfinches.
She pines, too, for the hummingbirds who come throughout the summer days to feast on the aphids hiding on the undersides of the leaves and then return to perch hidden in the foliage as the sun sets on our yard.
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Brent Johner has been writing about urban wildlife since 1998. Many of the articles here first appeared in the Calgary Herald, Calgary Gardening magazine or on Talk About Wildlife. Brent has also done dozens of radio, television, newspaper and magazine interviews on the subject of urban wildlife.