Written earlier:

Bitter Creek was completely socked in when I woke up. It reminded me of that Looney Toons cartoon with Daffy Duck where a giant animator’s hand enters the frame and erases the background, and eventually Daffy himself. 

I'm currently sitting in the flight pen blind once more. It's 10 am and the birds are finally waking up, the layabouts. I can't really blame them though. It is cold and pea soupy. I didn't want to get up either. All at once, they began to flap their wings, presumably to generate heat since there's no sun to be had.

My eyeballs are fogging up the lenses of my binoculars.

Aw, poor 487. Despite the fact that she is no more or less exposed to the elements than her captive bretheren and sisteren, she looks so sad sitting out on this limb of a snag tree outside the flight pen, stoically getting rained on.

  

I at last left the flight pen when I couldn’t see the birds 10 feet in front of me. Taking signals in the evening, the clouds—which had lifted around 3—began to descend on me with alarming rapidity. Just when I practically couldn’t see my own hand (curse you, giant animator!), a coyote called off in the distance, and then again, closer. I wasn’t particularly concerned but it was, admittedly, a little eerie. I figured I could fight it off with my Yagi if it came to that.