Snow may be covering the ground but Arbor Day is April 25 and if you’re a fifth-grader who wants to enter the Arbor Day Poster Contest, you’d better get cracking. Deadline for entries is Jan. 17.

Handy-dandy facts: The sugar maple is the state tree of NY and Arbor Day got its start in Nebraska in the 1800s. Pioneers moving in apparently missed their trees.

Clean snow is edible. That’s a fact, in case you were wondering, from the folks at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.

The NSIDC Web site is chock full of snow-related tidbits, such as “Practically every location in the United States has seen snowfall. Even most portions of southern Florida have seen a few snow flurries.”

There’s photos of bygone blizzards and an engrossing read titled “Have Snow Shovel, Will Travel,” which provides a historical look at snow removal in the U.S.

When you’re done with all that, you can sit back and listen to Dean.

A second mitten crab, an invasive crab from east Asia, has been discovered in the Hudson River — raising worries that the exotic crab may establish a population in the river and threaten native species, such as blue crabs. (In the link above, Click on “Update” under “New Species Alert.”)

An e-mail sent out this week to the Mitten Crab Network confirmed that the crab in question, which washed up in Cold Spring in Putnam County in October, was indeed a mitten crab. The first one ever found in the Hudson was hauled in by a commercial fisherman in June near Nyack.

According to the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, 11 confirmed mitten crabs have been found in the Mid-Atlantic region, mostly in the Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware Bay. The one found in Cold Spring was the first juvenile, but scientists “still cannot confirm a self sustaining population in the Mid- Atlantic region.”

In addition to threatening native aquatic populations, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, the non-native crabs could also damage stream banks and earthen dam stability with their burrowing habits, leading to erosion and habitat loss.

To understand how they got their name, check out their claws.

Skunks don’t hang it up when winter comes along. I’ve noticed a few tire-flattened Pepe Le Pews over the past few days. Plus, a couple of weeks ago, a colleague here at The Journal News had to deskunk her dog after it tangled with one. This is what the state Department of Environmental Conservation says when it comes to skunks and winter:

Although skunks in New York retreat to winter dens and remain inactive for extended periods, they do not hibernate. Males in particular are likely to be active aboveground periodically.”

Keep bird feeders full in the winter since food availability is very limited for non-migratory birds.

Fill large pine cones with peanut butter and roll them in sunflower seeds. Attach a string to the top and hang from trees for birds.

Invest in a heated birdbath and keep it filled all winter long. Birds need the water at this time of year when most natural sources may be frozen.

Put decorative snowflakes 4” apart on any windows where birds might hit, or have hit in the past.

Put a cover over any window wells around your house to prevent animals from becoming stuck. Animals, such as skunks, who have poor climbing abilities commonly fall into window wells.

Use only environmentally-friendly sidewalk salt for melting ice such as Safe Paws Ice Melter. Regular sidewalk salts pollute the environment and can irritate cats’ and dogs’ paws.

Get to know your backyard wild neighbors by going on an adventure around your own yard in the snow. Try to identify different species by looking at tracks and other signs they leave behind, such as partial remains of food like cracked nuts or twigs. Buy a good wildlife tracking guide – or give one as a gift – to learn more and to better appreciate these animals.

Hawks on the highway. Sounds like some country-rock band. (Read on for ferals cats, their opening act.)

But it’s a reference to the three red-tailed hawks I spotted sitting in trees along Interstate 84 this morning, all between exits 17 and 18. Most times, if you spot a large hawk sitting along the highway, it’s a red-tailed. To them, the grassy medians are like a fully-loaded dining room table to you and me: mice, rabbits and other small animals that make up the birds’ menu are apt to scurry by and become dinner.

Now, from large, talon-equipped hawks to little, basically defenseless and endangered shorebirds. If you missed it a couple of weeks ago, Bruce Barcott in the New York Times Magazine took a look at the feral cat versus bird issue. He focused on a case in Texas, where a birding advocate shot a feral cat that was preying on piping plovers. He goes on to take a look at the debate over whether cats are literally eating away at bird populations.

The New Mexico meadow jumping mouse and the San Bernadino springsnail were among the five species nominated this week for inclusion on the federal Endangered Species list. Not an honor you want, to be sure. But the nominations carry a supposed silver lining. By sending out notice it’s contemplating adding these guys to the endangered list, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is alerting natural resource managers about the potential threats to these plants and animals. In turn, the managers can work to alleviate the threats before the animal or plant is actually listed.

Do you have downy versus hairy issues, as in identifying those two similar looking woodpeckers? I do.

Turns out, a supposedly easy way to tell a downy woodpecker from a hairy woodpecker is by bill size. Hairys have a bill almost as long as their head.

What started me down this road was spotting two similar, yet different looking woodpeckers at the bird feeders the other day. A lot of times when it comes to birds, I take the group-classification approach. That means, if I see a sparrow, I know it’s a sparrow and don’t bother to try and figure out if it’s a song sparrow, chipping sparrow, etc. This method (or bit of laziness, you decide) works well for a lot of the small birds: warblers, finches and the above-mentioned woodpeckers. 

Anyway, as you can see from the photo, the woodpecker on the left looks kind of dirty. That made me pay closer attention. I haven’t come to any definitive decisions as to the species of each. But I did find this post on the Web that talks about woodpeckers becoming soiled with tannins from the tree bark they’re always rubbing against or becoming discolored by pollution.

If anyone has any further thoughts, feel free to weigh in.

For more than a century, birders have been taking to the fields, forests, streams, lakes and elsewhere in a merry search for avian life. Even partridges in pear trees probably don’t escape detection during Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count. More than 50,000 observers participate each year in the count, which provides data on the status and distribution of bird populations across the Western Hemisphere. The count period runs from Dec. 14 to Jan. 5, so observers aren’t out beating the bushes when they should be with family.

The Bedford Audubon Society is sponsoring a talk next week by the count’s director, Geoffrey LeBaron. The program, which is free and open to the public, is at the Katonah Library on Dec. 12 at 7:30 p.m.

Got the winter blues already? Well, by this weekend, the days may seem like they’re getting longer. It’s actually a matter of seconds then minutes. But by time the winter solstice rolls around, which is Dec. 22 this year, the sun will be setting about four minutes later than it does on Friday.

Through a quirk of timekeeping and the Earth’s orbital wanderings through space, the day with the earliest sunset occurs about two weeks before the day with the shortest amount of daylight. Any light gained in the afternoon as we get closer to the solstice is kind of lost in the morning because the sun will keep rising later and later (and continue doing so until early January). But, it’s the extra afternoon daylight most folks notice.