Heads up! Up high in Mountain City trees crowds of masked Cedar Waxwings hide in plain sight. They gorge on hackberries. RonTom and I have counted upwards of 100 in the cedar elm above our front yard birdbath, drifting up and down, with a dozen or more on the birdbath.

We saw a crowd of cows along the barbed wire fence that separates Lynn Cobb’s backyard from the neighboring ranch on the backside of Mountain City when we came in from church. The bovines were eating Christmas leftovers, the ...