A little fox

Last night I was driving back to the cabin, and as I approached Roundtop I reached an open area near the north parking lot. As I always do, I slowed down and looked around and on the other side of the now-locked entry road, I saw a red fox standing in the middle of the road, with a tiny something at the fox’s feet that didn’t reach above the adult fox's knees. I couldn't tell what the little blob was, but there was something in the adult’ fox’s posture that made me think it was a little fox-ling.

So I drove into the ski area, and headed up the access road from inside the area. I pulled out my camera, rolled down my window and hoped that the fox would still be there. At first, I didn’t see anything and I thought the fox had simply gone into the woods. But then, I saw the little one.

This is the tiniest fox I’ve ever seen. It’s not even red yet, it’s mostly brown-ish. I never did see mom, but I heard her barking and encouraging the little one to move, which it did. Now this isn’t the best fox photo I’ve ever taken, but as it was dusk, and I was inside the car, it’s not too bad. I didn’t linger. I didn’t want to upset the baby and/or mom so I turned around and headed back to the cabin.

I’m sorry for the light blogging lately. I’ve been harboring a cold and haven’t been out all that much. I think I’ve turned the corner on this one, now, though, so I’m planning to resume usual blogging schedule.

April showers

Rain has moved across the mountain today, bringing some much-needed April showers. The region is now nearly 6 inches below normal for rainfall. Today's rain will help that a bit, though I don't think I'm supposed to get more than 1 inch today. Still, it is a help.

The buds on the smaller trees are about to pop. The dog-toothed violet is soon to bloom--or maybe not. Tonight and tomorrow night frost is expected, perhaps even a killing frost, though that is less likely. In any event, it's probably likely that the little frost will be the coldest night before fall rolls around again.

For now, it is warm enough on a gray and rainy morning but not so warm that a little hot tea wouldn't taste pretty good in the next few minutes. I took a brief walk in the woods yesterday afternoon before the rain settled in. The forest still doesn't look too spring-like. Bare trees, only a few with buds. I find a little onion grass, a tiny handful of green grass but little else. Likely the dryness of the forest floor has something to do with that. The temperature this spring has been about normal, if tending towards the cooler side of normal.

So this rain, despite the cold that will follow for a few days, will do my area a lot of good. I am already thinking this is one of those springs where nothing much happens for a long time--and then it will all explode at once. It will be the kind of spring where you can almost see the change from hour to hour let alone from morning to evening. Then I will likely complain that it's too fast, that there's too much to see. Such is spring.

My photo today was taken as the weather was moving in but before the rain actually started. Roundtop is in the distance, still with a little snow. That is disappearing really fast in this rain. The orchard still looks pretty barren--no blossoms yet. The orchard and the forest alike are in waiting, soon to take center stage.

Last night it snowed...

...for about 15 minutes.

Fifteen minutes of light snow was just enough to leave a few patches on the ground last evening. Snow in this area on this date qualifies as a late snow, but it’s by no mean the latest. Measurable snows have fallen up until the last day of April here, and a trace of snow has been recorded into early May.

Still, the odds are that this little bit of snow will probably be our onion snow, which is what is what we call an early spring snow, usually considered to be the last snow of the season. Onion snows are so named as they come right when onions are pushing up in the gardens.

As I have always understood the term, an onion snow has to be more than just flurries. Flurries don’t count. The snow has to be at least lay on the ground, though it doesn’t have to be measurable. In some areas, apparently an onion snow is any snow that comes when the onions are up, but where I live an onion snow must also be the last snow of the season. Naturally, you don’t always know which little bit of snow is going to be the last snow of the season, so this gives the retired folks who meet for coffee at the local restaurants something to debate the next morning.

Perhaps you can also see in my photo today the flower stalk of the dog-toothed violet that will soon be in bloom. It’s not every year that I have snow on a flower stalk of anything, so I thought that was interesting enough to make it today’s photo.

Little greenery around the cabin

All the new greenery around the cabin right now is tiny stuff. This fern, which has grown out of the rock for years now, is the largest of the lot. The fern is a common polypody, which can make a living and can grow where virtually nothing else can.

The second photo is some of the greenery from trout lilies (or yellow dog-toothed violet) that grows just outside the cabin door. I have to be careful not to step on it when I'm loading or unloading the car. Although there's always a lot of leaves, I don't usually get many flowers from the plants. I will likely see 2-3-4 violets, never all at once. With this many leaves, though, you'd likely guess there should be 20 flowers at once. Don't I wish. Maybe some year.

The last photo, which includes the rusty iron stake that holds my wind chimes, is of wild purple violets. I always have a group of them at this spot, which I really have to be careful not to step on as they are within 3 inches of the last step out of the cabin door. They always grow in this spot too. I have other wild violets here and there around the property, but I've always wondered if the original plants that grow in this spot were transplanted here or not. It just seems amazing to me that I'd have wild violets right at the foot of the steps appearing here of their own accord. Regardless, they have been here ever since I've lived in the cabin.Every evening when I get home, I wander through the driveway, checking to see what's sprung up since the morning. I see a little more progress every day. Seedlings that were unidentifiable in the morning are now taller and are somewhat more identifiable. Every evening I come home and see more tiny spots of greenery that weren't there 12 hours before.

I look forward to this twice daily ritual. For me, one of the amazing things about spring is how quickly things change. Partly, it's because winter seems unchanging through much of it. But equally important is an erroneous perception that I used to have. My perception was that plants grow so slowly it takes days to see change and even then you had to really pay attention to see the difference. That's not true. At all. When I pay attention, I can see the change between morning and evening. I still find that amazing.

April sun

Forget June. Sunday here on Roundtop was even rarer—a sunny day in April. And not just sunny but perfectly clear, the sky a gem-quality shade of blue. I took the opportunity to wander from one end of my little property to the other, pausing every step or two to examine the seedlings poking up through the ground.

The greening of the forest floor is underway, buoyed by the Friday rain and the Sunday sunshine. Most of the seedlings are still mostly unidentifiable, each with just two small leaflets that look like every other seedling, from radishes to violets and poison ivy. A few things—the dog-toothed violets (trout lily) for one—are already identifiable. In the case of the those, the two-toned leaves make for an easy identification.

The arrival of spring birds is still slow. I now regularly hear a phoebe in the morning, but not multiple phoebes. The siskins are still coming to my feeders, as are the juncos, but the year-long residents like the titmice and chickadees seem to be less frequent, as though they are off finding natural food in the forest more tempting than my seeds and nuts.

My photo today is not of the forest floor, however. Instead it is of my view to the west, a reminder to me of the view that will disappear within a few weeks. Once the leaves come out, I will be encased in greenery, and the sight of the next range of mountains will vanish until sometime in late October or early November, a full half a year away. But for now, the trees haven’t even started to bud, and the view is still with me.

Odds and Ends

Rain is still in short supply here, though this morning I am surrounded by thick fog and mist. I’m starting to see some more signs of greenery around the cabin. Even on the forest floor, many of the seedlings are now developing their second set of leaves. That pretty much leaves them still unidentifiable, though given where the tiny plants are located, I’m thinking that many of them are likely mayapples.

I have reached something of a milestone at the cabin. The pine siskins are still around, which makes this the first time I’ve seen them here in April. In fact, this is the first year they’ve been regular feeder visitors throughout a winter. I’ve had them show up before here and there, for a day or so at a time. However, this winter they moved in during January and have appeared every day since then.

My photo today shows moss on one of the boulders in my front forest. The moss has gotten quite green over the last week and seems to be growing nicely.

This year I, like many people, am planning to grow more vegetables than I usually attempt. Here in the woods, I don’t get much sunlight, so my attempts at growing things are not always successful. Last year my neighbor, who gets a little more sun than I do, had nice success with her tomatoes and that has spurred me to attempt some, too.

I will grow the veggies on my back deck, where I should avoid deer and rabbit issues, though will still likely have to deal with the raccoons and opossums. At this point the little plantlings are safe and under a plastic dome on my kitchen table. They will remain there for several weeks yet but I will keep you apprised of my progress (or lack thereof) as time goes by.

Gloomy morning ennui

There’s no getting around it. It’s a gloomy morning. It’s not raining hard enough for me to settle in with a mug of tea or a good book and actually wallow in the gloom. When it’s not really doing anything outside, that seems excessively over-indulgent.

So for now I am soldiering through, trying to pretend it’s just another day, which it is. My area certainly needs rain, and I don’t begrudge any actual days of rain, but when it’s not raining and is still this gloomy, doesn’t that seem excessive, too? Get on with it, already! Rain or don’t rain but let’s not just gloom along for days on end.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Nearly every day, I find another little sign that spring is here. A little sign today, a little one tomorrow, and after a week or two, that all adds up to a lot of indications that the season is changing. This morning I saw a male eastern goldfinch that was about half-changed into his bright yellow and black breeding plumage.

On Sunday I saw the usual group of goldfinch among the pine siskins at my feeders. Not one of those had started to molt. So, is this a "new" goldfinch? Has the molt started since then and already progressed that quickly? Did I simply miss seeing this particular goldfinch this weekend? I have no idea. I only know that Mr. Goldfinch and his lady-love appeared at the feeders this morning, and he is already starting to look rather dashing.

Both this early morning and last evening I saw lots of migrating turkey vultures. The birds are flying both earlier and later in the day than is usual for them. I am blaming the weather for that. After several days of overcast and misty weather, yesterday was clear but windy, today will be sunny and less windy. Tomorrow brings the first of three days of rain. So the birds have only a limited opening for a little northward migration.

Birds have a heightened sense of weather systems moving in, weather moving out and when they’d better make hay and just move. They easily sense high and low pressure systems—you would too if you could fly. But their ability to see or sense systems that aren’t here yet, is to my mind, even more impressive. That ability seems extra-fine-tuned, some mechanism that allows them to know far more than just what weather is here today and extends that to also knowing what will be tomorrow and beyond.

It’s one thing for me to look at the radar and see that storm system over in Indiana, but when you see 10,000 raptors move earlier in the season than is their typical pattern ahead of a group of systems that is going to shut down migration for at least a week, you know they are seeing or sensing it, too. That’s amazing.

Bare trees, angry sky

The first boom of thunder sent the Dog, Baby Dog and assorted cats cringing and then darting for cover. They’d all forgotten, apparently, what thunderstorms are. Winter and summer are usually the times I expect extreme weather—extreme cold, heavy snow or heat and drought. However, this weekend reminded me that extremes are just as common in spring too.

Thunderstorms, tornados only a few miles away, the telephone knocked out by a lightning strike. Grandmother Nature was throwing her weight around again. In the end, I was lucky, the tornados missed me and the cabin, though wreaked havoc not far to the south and destroyed mobile homes next door in Lancaster County.

This morning, the sky still has an angry look to it, less angry perhaps than yesterday, but still angry enough. The freshening air brought the local vultures and Red-tailed hawks out this morning before the sun was well up. Ahead of the storms, the weather was rainy, overcast and foggy, so the raptors were taking advantage of the early morning conditions that were better for their hunting than it had been for days.

I thought, perhaps, that once this storm cleared, I would start to see more of spring around the cabin. That may happen tomorrow or the next day but it hasn’t happened this morning.

Yesterday, 15 pine siskins ate their way through my bird seed. These little finches are not inclined to move north again just yet, apparently. I am hoping, for no good reason whatsoever, that they will hang around for at least another two days so I can record them on my April bird list, which would be a first.

The trees are still not showing any sign of impeding leaves, as you can tell from this morning’s photo. I do see a few fat buds here and there but even those aren’t common. Sunday, I noticed a few tiny seedlings pushing through the ground on the forest floor, but it’s still too early to call them anything but seedlings.

I did see and hear the first eastern phoebe of the season this weekend. So far, I’ve only encountered a single bird and that not at the cabin, but it was on Roundtop. This is the first time I've ever seen siskins and phoebes on the same day. That's amazing enough for me, at least for this Monday morning.

A funny thing happened on the way to today's photo...

No, this photo was not taken on Roundtop—don’t I wish!

I took this photo about 10 years ago when I was backpacking the Chilkoot Trail in Alaska in late September. The view was taken on our next to last day on the trail, looking towards Lake Bennett in the distance. At this point, my hiking partner and I had the trail kicked. If you can make it up and over the Chilkoot Pass, you’ve pretty much got the trail kicked. We’d done just that the day before and were only a few miles from the night’s camp site, and we were happy campers.

My plans for today’s Roundtop photo didn’t work out.

Late yesterday I was driving back to the cabin. It was raining a bit and overcast. A flock of 20+ wild turkeys ambled across the road, ruffling their feathers, the males displaying their tails and all of them generally just doing what turkeys do. I took a couple of photos. Unfortunately, none of them are clear, even though they looked fine in the little 2 inch camera view . It was too dark. Well, that’s what happens sometimes.

So I ended up photo-less for the day, with my only options to not post today, or not run a photo today or to use an old photo. I’ve been organizing some of my Alaska photos recently, so I thought, why not?

Anyway, back to reality and Roundtop: I’ve still not heard the first eastern phoebe of the season, so the species is now officially late by my records. An average arrival date for the birds would have been two weeks ago. This isn’t a surprise. Phoebes aren’t like swallows returning to Capistrano on the same day every year. Phoebes show up when conditions are right for them and not before. The weather is getting close, I think, to what they consider "right."

Bird migration seems to be running a bit late this year, judging by the pace of reports from the spring hawkwatches. Vultures are moving in good numbers, and Red-tailed hawks are moving decently. Eagles of both species are moving north (but those birds are strong enough to fly in almost any weather). The rest of the crowd—falcons, accipiters and smaller buteos—not so much yet.

Roundtop got about .25 inch of a nice gentle rain, not nearly enough to impact the 5 inch deficit, but it was a start. Once this rain clears the region, I think spring and bird migration will take a big step forward. All at once. Stay tuned.

Have a great weekend.

A little rain

A little rain is falling on the mountain this morning. Very little, actually, and not nearly enough to impact the nearly 5 inch rainfall deficit. Still, it’s enough to likely end the red flag fire warning that the area is under currently. At least I hope so. This is certainly the first time I’ve seen one of those in March.

In any event, the overcast skies made it too dark to take a photo this morning, so I am posting one I took on Monday evening. Today’s photos is a lichen. Pennsylvania has over 400 species of lichens, I’ve read, but I’m not really able to identify many of them. Sometimes I think I can identify the family, but further investigation often makes me doubt even that much.

What I can tell you is that a group of small trees in this one spot are pretty much covered with this particular lichen. I am thinking this is one of the so-called green shield lichens, which are both common in my area and commonly grow on tree bark. If so, then this is not a plant. Green shield lichens are a combination of a fungus and either an algae or a photosynthetic bacteria.

Like all lichens, they tend to be sensitive to pollution, which is why they are not commonly seen in urban areas. However, that said, this particular lichen family is apparently at least somewhat less sensitive than most. They are said not to harm the trees on which they grow.

I suspect this is flavoparmelia caperata, the common green shield lichen. This variety likes clinging to tree bark, but will also grow on rocks, and the round or oval rosettes are typical. The surface of the lichens gets greener when wet—that’s the algae part migrating to the surface.

Maybe it will be greener tomorrow. I'll have to check.

Early morning crow

Living in the forest in late March and early April is a quiet time and one that I enjoy and look forward to every year. For a few weeks, if I am lucky, there is this lull that seems to take hold, if only briefly.

Winter is over, the big parka put away for another year. Being outside is easier again. The snow cover is gone, and even though I only had a few inches of it this year, a few inches is all that’s needed to make foot travel a bit complicated.

Spring is not yet here. At least, the full blown part of spring isn’t here yet. The majority of the migrating birds have not yet arrived. New growth hasn’t started yet. In fact, the nights are still fairly deep into the 20’s, though the days tend more and more towards 50F.

In the mornings, I hear a few robins sing, but the loud dawn "Hallelujah" chorus with many species is still weeks away. In this particular spring, rain hasn’t yet added its notes to the quiet around me. The winds of winter that made even a normal winter temperature feel frigid have calmed.

This morning the forest is still, the birds quiet. It’s like the forest is at that point between the inhale and the exhale of breath. Even the crows are quiet. They are not still, and move from perch to ground and back again. Watchful and alert but waiting, perhaps, for something else to make the first sound.

Habitat around the cabin

Where I live, the largest habitat around me is the forest that covers the mountain. It’s not the only one, though. Roundtop has many ponds of varying sizes, most created over the years as areas to hold water for winter’s snow-making. But a manmade pond is still a pond, and I doubt the flora and fauna that benefit and live around them know the difference.

Plants, like these cattails, thrive around the edges of the ponds. In turn, the plants create homes for frogs and nest sites for red-winged blackbirds, among others. Dragonflies are common in summer. Virtually every day I see the deer or foxes either going to or coming from the ponds, which is where they find water.

All in all, these manmade ponds are now thoroughly colonized by the same citizens as natural ponds, and everyone seems happy. I have often wondered where the deer and foxes would go for water, if the ponds were not here. A few seasonal streams rush down the mountain in springtime, but the only true source of open, natural water is at the bottom of the mountain, and in dry years, there is precious little of that.

Overall, the manmade ponds, I believe, have contributed both to the diversity of species I now find on the mountain and to the health of the ones that would have been here anyway, though likely would be found in fewer numbers.

If it’s one thing I’ve discovered about natural species, it’s that any of them that can take advantage of a human-altered landscape will. Somehow, the tiny cattail seeds found these ponds, carried on the wind, no doubt. Those seeds were the lucky ones, as who knows how many more fell on the miles of forest floor that surrounds this little pond. Those will never grow, as these have. Nature finds a way, eventually, to succeed against overwhelming odds.

Balance

Today’s photo was taken at spring equinox (March 20). This photo was taken 23 days after my second photo for Experiment #2 (see below). The sun is now setting quite a bit further north than it was back in early February, when I took the first photo. No wonder the days are now warmer.

Equinox is a time of balance between the hours of daylight and the night. It marks the time when winter is over and spring begins to take hold. And yet, both winter and spring are still in evidence here on the mountain. I still have pine siskins at my feeders, but the robins are here too.

I have a fantasy that I will somehow get a photograph showing both the siskins and the robins in the same frame, but I am already realizing this is something of a fantasy. So far, I haven’t seen the two species within 50 yards of each other, let along close enough to get them both in the same photo, though the idea that this year such a photo is at least a possibility keeps me on the lookout.

Over the weekend, I saw my first Mourning Cloak butterfly stream past as I enjoyed a few moments of sunlight out on the back deck this weekend. They are always the first butterfly of the spring season, but I seem to always be surprised when I see them. Perhaps it’s simply that after the butterfly-less winter, the sight of the first one is a happy sign that spring is truly here.

This weekend, Turkey Vultures were migrating north in good numbers. I saw many kettles, or flocks, of them, each with perhaps 10-15 birds. I saw a few hawks, too, mostly Red-tailed Hawks, circling and heading north. At least a few of those must have been migrants, though on warm days like this one was, the local birds could be out enjoying the air, too.

The days are warm, flirting with 50F though not always successful at reaching that temperature. The nights are often still down in the 20’s, sometimes the lower 20’s. The old and new seasons are side by side here on Roundtop right now--winter with spring, old with new, siskins with robins. Like the equinox itself, this balance will be held but briefly and then the year will turn a bit more and winter will be gone.

Open water

Open water. Spring. The two go together. Waterfowl won’t move north until the lakes and rivers are open enough to welcome them. Frogs and spring peepers need open water, too.

Spring is not just a time of new beginnings. It can also mark an opening, or a re-opening, after the hibernations of winter. In winter, it feels natural to huddle around the warmth of a fire while snow rages and temperatures plummet outside. Winter can be a time of learning and of study. But after a while, after a few months, we grow restless. What is at first enjoyable begins to feel a bit claustrophobic.

When spring arrives, the change in temperature and weather encourages greater activity and exploration on our part again. No longer the early hours of darkness. No longer 10 minutes needed to get dressed for the outdoors. Spring is when we first put our winter studies into practice, to see how winter's retrenchment and reflection has taken hold in our souls.

Spring is the time of awareness and growth, the time when we see how the winter has changed us. We should be open again, too, just like the rivers and streams.

Happy spring!

What the deer did

Isn’t that a cute little deer? This is one of the two cute little deer that have survived the winter using my two juniper bushes for browse. The second photo is one of the juniper bushes, which is pretty well eaten down to the bare branch. The top of the bush is where the deer can’t reach. That’s why it looks so much better.

I’m not worried about the juniper bushes. Every few years or so a winter is harsh enough that deer eat them like this. In a few months it will be as good as new. But I do think the before and after photos on the same bush are interesting.

I also find it interesting that this winter has been so hard on the deer that they were forced into my driveway to eat the junipers. In many ways, the winter should not have been difficult. The temperature was roughly average, perhaps even a hair above average. Snowfall was virtually non-existent, so the forest floor was open for browsing nearly all the time.

Deer, however, eat a lot of acorns and they were in very short supply last year. 2007 produced a bumper crop of them but 2008 was a dud for acorns. Lots of folks have posited reasons for the lack. At this point, I think the trees were just resting a bit after 2007. In any event few acorns directly translated into a tough winter for deer, even though the forest floor was bare and they would have had no trouble finding anything that lay on the ground.

Since they were still left with nothing to eat but my juniper bushes, I can only emphasize how important acorns are to deer in winter. I can also say that anything else that remains on the forest floor during winter apparently is so limited that deer can’t get a decent meal from it even when that forest floor isn’t covered by snow. I can’t imagine that there isn’t something down there for a grazer to eat, but whatever it is, apparently there isn’t much of it.

And one final thought: imagine how difficult this winter would have been for the deer if snow cover had blanketed the forest floor during it. With few acorns, lots of snow cover and essentially little or nothing else around to provide a good meal, I suspect that many of last year’s fawns, like this little guy, simply wouldn’t have made it through a winter like that at all.

Spring arriving, day by day

Robins are arriving in good numbers here on Roundtop. The worms are up, so the robins are here. I have noticed that none of the robin yet have the white spots on the outer tail feathers that marks their breeding plumage. At this point, when I see robins, I see them in flocks. They don’t appear to be settling in or defending territories yet.

No hint of greenery is peeking through the brown of last year’s grasses, but waterfowl are moving north, robins are here, and the nights are no longer always below freezing. The days have been gloomy and gray, though don’t bring much-needed rain. Primarily because snowfall was non-existent here this past winter, the area is now 4 inches behind in precipitation, an amount that can not easily or quickly be made up. My seedlings are now sun-starved and grow long and stringy from the lack.

The spring hawkwatchers are starting their watches, though the numbers of birds spotted are still low, and many report more sightings of geese or siskins than of raptors. I have not yet heard spring peepers, but I have glimpsed a frog on one of my dog walks. As it was more of a splash than a frog, I can’t tell you what kind it was.

Spring is here in many ways, though the woods don’t yet look much like spring. The forest still looks like November, though without the ice. The evenings are warmer, and smell of good earth. The birds know it is time to move north; more arrive or move through each day. Soon the first shoots will push through the softening ground and the woods will turn green again.

More siskins than ever before!

Sometimes I’m surprised when I am looking for information about a species and find that the information apparently doesn’t exist. Such is the case with today’s pine siskins.

All winter long I’ve had 3 or 4, and perhaps as many as 5 pine siskins at my feeders. After a late arrival compared with other local feeders, the birds have appeared daily and often multiple times each day at my feeders. This weekend, I suddenly have 10 pine siskins. The siskins visit at least three times a day and likely more as even I don’t spend every waking moment in front of the feeders to keep track of them.

So, my question was simply, are these likely to be 10 new siskins or my regular 5 siskins plus 5 new arrivals? And what I’ve discovered is that the spring movements of these birds are apparently not well studied enough to even provide a reasonable guess to that question.

Because these birds are irruptive and only head south when food supplies in the north are lacking, studying spring movements of siskins here in the south is inherently problematic. I found no studies about when the birds are likely to head north again.

The only answers I can find are anecdotal. Spring movements back to the north are called "protracted," based on when they return to their breeding grounds, with no actual peak to their movements. In my area, anecdotal evidence suggests the birds could continue to eat pounds of seed here in Pennsylvania well into April.

So I don’t know how long these little beauties will continue to grace my feeders or for how much longer they will continue to eat a hole in my birdseed budget. The only thing I am really sure of is that whenever they do head north again, they will be as fat and happy as my seed can make them.

Nearly wordless Wednesday

You might not hear from me for a few days. I’ll be away from high-speed internet for a bit, which makes uploading photos problematic. I expect to return on Monday, if I don’t have connection success before that. With a little luck, I will be on before then, but I’m not going to count on it so I’m giving everyone fair warning.

I'm not going far but I am hoping for a few new photos and stories to report whenever I do make it back online.

Sunrise on the mountain

The sunrises over Roundtop have been particularly lovely this week. It’s the clouds, of course. Good sunrises and good sunsets need clouds to enhance them. When skies are perfectly clear, the sun simply clears the horizon and the day begins with no particular drama to announce it.

The clouds add color to the sky and alter the lighting that falls here on the mountain. When I can catch the reflection of good sunrise in a pond, that doubles the effect and make it even better. Usually I like sunrises better than sunsets. For one thing, I can’t usually catch a reflection in a lake or pond during sunset but mostly, I just think sunrises are prettier, even though sunsets seem to get most of the good press.

That whole riding off into the sunset thing has been way overdone, in my book. I think riding off into the sunrise sounds a lot more interesting, as though the story is just beginning instead of ending.

Sunrises signify that I’ve made it to see another day and have a whole new day in front of me. Both of those things are good things. When the sun is setting, the day is over and who knows what the night might bring? Better to have a sunrise in front of me, I say. I prefer possibilities to endings.

Balance

Spring is sneaking up on me, one tiny step at a time. Yesterday, I heard the first killdeer and the first robins. Late in the afternoon I saw a flock of Canada geese, v’ed high over the cabin and heading north. And yet, the pine siskins are still daily visitors to my feeders, and the two lost little deer are eating my juniper bushes because it’s the only food they can find. The grass is still dead and brown with little sign that it will turn green soon.

The deer are tamer by the day, almost by the hour. On Saturday I drove into the cabin and past the deer, who didn’t move and barely looked up from eating the juniper. I got out of the car, took the groceries from the back, made two trips in and out of the cabin, and still they stood there and ate, not 15 feet away.

Sunday afternoon I went outside for a walk and when I opened the front door, one of them stood at the bottom of the steps, two front feet on the lowest step so it could reach higher on that juniper bush. It did move when I stepped outside but it was in no hurry.

I am poised between winter and spring, neither wholly in one season or the other. Pieces of both seasons surround me in almost equal parts, balanced precariously. Soon the balance will tip and give way to spring. I can’t even imagine how many times this has happened in our earth’s life. The seasons are turning again today, an old tale in a new year.

Surprise!

Surprise, surprise. The little deer I’ve been seeing at the cabin is not one deer but two. This morning I saw the two of them together for the first time. The little deer on the right is the one I’ve seen (and nearly hit twice now) most often. When I look at the faces of these deer, I see quite a difference between them. That little guy on the right has more of a "cute" and fuzzy look than the one on the left, which has a rather graceful face.

Both the little deer appear to be orphaned, and I’m guessing that mom wasn’t around long enough to teach them any wariness. They have discovered my juniper bushes now and have been happily foraging on them for at least the past few days. Every day they grow more bold and less likely to run when I go outside.

Yesterday, I even suspected that the deer was (well, "were" now since there are two) sleeping under the cabin. The land was never leveled when the cabin was built. Instead, one side of the cabin is raised 3-4 above the ground. Anyway, yesterday morning when I opened the back door to fill the bird feeders, little-deer-on-the-right suddenly appeared right next to the cabin, sort of shook himself and wandered slowly down into the woods. The night before, I heard a large "bump" coming from the juniper bush beside the cabin and just off the front deck when I stepped outside one last time before bed.

For at least the past week, not a day goes by that I don’t see one. Sometimes it’s just a fleeting look. Sometimes the little fuzzy one will simply stand and stare at me. I see them out behind the cabin, in front of the cabin and regularly in the driveway.

They are chomping the juniper bushes because there’s little natural forage right now. Although the snow cover melted yesterday—a few patches are left—it’s still too early for new growth, even new grass growth, which will spring up with the first rain. Last year’s acorn crop was essentially non-existent. So the deer are hungry and taking advantage of what little they can find—in this case my two juniper bushes.

I’m not worried about the juniper bushes. They will recover in a few months time. I am sort of hoping the deer will move off as soon as the grass is green again. I don’t want to hit one, and they shouldn’t be as tame as they are, though I know I won’t have the heart to chase them off.

The pursuits of spring

In March, even the cold weather here feels warm. I find myself running outside for one thing or another with a cap and gloves as my only outer clothes. Then I look at the thermometer and it reads 12 degrees. Of course, I’m not standing still outside and I’m not spending hours outside dressed like that. But now that the wind is calm and the sky is sunny, the temperature feels perfectly fine.

Comfort is a relative thing, I guess. In October, say, after the warmth of summer, 12 degrees would feel criminal. And even today, with a little wind or clouds to hide the sun, 12 degrees wouldn’t feel very comfortable. And it certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable enough run outside without a coat. And in the weak sun of January, I’m not sure even calm winds and a sunny sky would make it feel very warm.

But for today 12 degrees is a fine temperature, and I even have the possibility of the afternoon breaking the freezing mark. This morning the male northern cardinal has upped his game, going from singing to his lady love to chasing her. She is not foolish enough, just yet, to fall for his pursuit—not this week anyway. But still, spring is no longer far away. Indeed it is just a short ways down the trail and around the first bend.

What a difference a few miles makes

Storms are funny things. Sometimes you get them, sometimes you don’t. I’m not surprised when a storm that is several states away doesn’t reach me or even one that is counties away. But when just a few miles makes a big difference, the difference simply feels odd.

I noticed that (again!) earlier this winter during two of the ice storms. I felt as though I was living in the middle of Dr. Zhivago, but when I drove down off the mountain, suddenly I was somewhere else. This latest nor’easter was like that, though this time the folks who live 7 miles south of me were in Dr. Zhivago, not me.

Roundtop ended up with perhaps 2-3 inches of snow. It’s hard to measure because it blew all over the place—still is. I took this photo early on in the snow, when I still had little more than a dusting. But just to the south of me, in York, they had 10 inches of snow. Schools were closed, people didn’t make it to work because the highway was a whiteout and then drifted shut again before the plows were a mile up the road.

Once again I have a pretty little snow—at least that’s how it looks from inside the cabin. The siskins are chasing the titmice away from the feeder. The squirrels are chasing the siskins away. The little deer is munching on the juniper bush at the foot of the steps. Outside it’s 4 degrees with 15-20 mph winds gusting to 30 mph, so that’s not too pretty. But it’s not Dr. Zhivago.

A not-quite snowy weekend

The big coastal nor’easter did not produce the major snowfall here that was forecast. I did get several inches of snow from it, but the big snow that I was hoping for didn’t materialize. Since it is now March, I may well not have the opportunity to use my cross-country skis or snowshoes at all this year, which would be a first.

I doubt the local birds and animals will mind much if the winter passes without a major or even a semi-major snowfall. The little deer that I saw last week is trying to make itself a nuisance. I almost hit it in my driveway on Saturday. My driveway is L-shaped, and I can’t see the bottom of the L until I make the turn. The little deer was standing right there when I did. It’s a good thing I wasn’t going too fast. Then yesterday it actually peered at me in the cabin. Baby Dog was yipping, so I went to the door to look out and see what it was, figuring that one of the local raccoons must be on the front deck again. It wasn’t a raccoon. It was the little deer, peering around the edge of the cabin, eyes wide, more curious than afraid. Even then it didn’t run off. It just switched its tail a time or two and casually moseyed off into the forest.

It must be that its mother is dead and so not around to tell it what it should and shouldn’t be doing. It looks healthy enough, and if it can make it through the next two days of bitter cold, it may well survive the winter. Hopefully, at some point it will wander far enough to hook up with some of the other deer on the mountain, and perhaps them it will learn more wariness.

Just a visit

It only took 1.5 warm days to entice a resident pair of Canada geese to return to their nesting pond for a look around. They’d better not get too comfortable just yet. Snow and sleet is forecast for the weekend.

I’ve lived here on Roundtop now for more than 15 years, and every year a pair of Canada geese has nested on this pond. In a few years, two pairs have nested here, but usually the second and third pairs settle in on one of the other small snow-making ponds on the property. The geese seem to prefer a single pair to one pond ratio.

This was the first time since late last summer that I’ve seen the geese on this pond again. They are a little spooky at the moment, though that typically passes. The geese apparently winter nearby on one of the larger ponds in the area. It’s not uncommon to hear geese in the winter or occasionally to see a few flying around but they don’t stay at this pond.

Sometimes the geese don’t raise their young on this pond. They nest here but as soon as the young can travel, they march them all to one of the other ponds. Sometimes, they do raise the young on this pond, and in those years they will stay until the young ones can fly. There’s no predicting what their preference will be this year. I'll just have to wait and see.

Experiment #2

Twenty days after my first photo of "experiment #2," I’m posting the second photo. I’ve been trying to get my second photo for most of this past week, only to have clouds hide the sunset at the last moment. Last night was at least my third attempt to get the second photo.

As you can tell, the sun has moved quite a bit to the north over the past 20 days. Sunset is now almost to the top of Nell’s Hill, and in the first photo sunset was very near the base of the mountain.

The snow has also disappeared since my first photo, due mostly to several warm days a week or so ago. Yesterday it was 14 degrees when I left the house. This morning it was above freezing, though I still had a sleet shower this morning.

I have a bad habit of tossing whatever outwear I’m using for the day over the back of a kitchen chair instead of hanging it in the closet. That way I can just grab it and go out and not be bothered with walking over to the closet, opening the closet door and removing the item (Yes, I know how lazy that sounds). This morning, the kitchen looked as though I must have had a slumber party overnight and none of us hung up our coats. I had something draped over every chair. So far this week I’ve worn my heavy parka, my regular cloth winter coat, a fleece jacket and this morning, a lined raincoat. If it warms up enough to take out the lining in the raincoat, I will have gone through all coat and jacket possibilities in my closet. And it’s only Thursday.

Here's the thing...

Winter here on Roundtop is running about average for temperatures. Actually, it’s a few degree days above average at the moment but as close to the actual average as it is running, a few colder days is about all it needs to peg it back to the average line. What is not average is the amount of snow fall I’ve had. Or, to put it more accurately, the amount of snow fall I haven’t had.

The snow fall amount is less than a third of what I should have seen by this time. Some of the difference is that early in the season I had several ice storms. but even if they had all been snow, they wouldn’t have improved the snow total all that much. In other words, it’s been a really dry winter.

That became quite evident to me this morning as I crunched my way across the remains of last fall’s leaves to take a photo this morning. In case you are wondering, it was either 12 or 14 degrees at the cabin this morning, depending on which thermometer I’m believing at the moment. It was so dry that even with this rather low temperature, I saw no frost.

All in all, the morning is as lovely as this photo looks. For once the wind isn’t roaring or howling or even whispering. The morning is still and calm and when I was standing in the sun, it didn’t feel very cold at all.

The dryness I’m seeing now could lead to big problems this summer. Snow is a great way for precipitation to fall. It covers everything. It melts more or less evenly and soaks into the ground. Rain, of course, often runs off more than it soaks in. So in the overall scheme of things, snow and the eventual snow melt does more to water the forest as a whole than rain often does. So when I don’t have much snow, well, let’s just say I’m already thinking ahead to summer and how that might impact the forest around me, not to mention my well. Oh, there’s still time yet for snow, and a good spring with some gentle soaking rains would do a lot to help, but this lack is already something to keep an eye on and be aware of for the months ahead.

Winter study

Winter is good for a lot outdoor activities, though the early darkness can be a limiting factor to many of them. When the day reaches the point that I can’t see anything when I am outside, I usually retreat to the cabin and enjoy another activity that seems best accomplished in winter—studying fieldguides. This year I am working on learning more about the local edible and poisonous plants.

Over the years I’ve learned the basics of my native plants, but I’ve never felt really expert about that level of knowledge. Things like birds, animals, animal tracks and even trees, ferns and fungi were always more exciting and interesting to me. Lately, though, I’ve been feeling that I need to spend some time improving my knowledge of the smaller plants around me.

In part, my interest this year is based on two things—the economy and the idea that I’ve pretty well studied most everything else already. My original hope was that I could cut down my food bill by doing some fairly serious foraging in the warmer months. I gave that idea up pretty quickly. Most of the fieldguides are kind of liberal in their take on what is edible. Edible includes many plants with medicinal uses, but far fewer that might actually end up on a dinner table for more than a garnish.

For years, I’ve gathered black raspberries and blueberries. Sometimes I’ve added fiddleheads and dandelion greens to a dinner salad. I gather hickory nuts when I can get to them before the squirrels. But if I put everything together in a box, it might, just might, be enough to feed me for perhaps a couple of days. If I added a few home-caught fish to the mix, I would add a few more days to my grand total, but the bottom line is that my home-gathered food isn’t going to last me very long.

This year I’m hoping to improve that dismal total a little bit. For the record, I’m not planning to eat any mushrooms, so don’t worry about that. I don’t trust my knowledge or lack thereof enough to try those anytime soon or maybe forever. I’m talking more about things like cattails or watercress, maybe burdock. Unfortunately, I don’t even hope to be able to go "off the grid" of the grocery store. I simply want to try the wild things that are out there and get a few free meals from the experience.

Busy little Carolina wren

The forest animals on Roundtop Mountain were busier this weekend than I’ve noticed in a while. The pine siskins that arrived late to my feeders have made up for that by hanging around all winter and visiting every day. The Carolina wren—I never see two at the same time, though certainly more than one is around—has also been a more regular visitor than it was earlier in the winter.

Yesterday, I saw a small, fuzzy deer peeking at me from around the edge of a thicket. Judging by its small size, it was one of last year’s fawns. I’ve heard what I’m pretty sure is this same deer several times. When I walk Dog and Baby Dog late in the evening, I’ve heard it near the cabin stamping or trotting away deeper into the woods through the dry leaves. Every now and again Baby Dog will let out a bark while staring into the woods. I suspect she has scented it and is announcing that she has done so.

I typically don’t see this fuzzy little deer with other deer, which is unusual. It should still be with mom or sibling or aunt. It looks healthy enough, not to mention cute as all get out in its winter coat. It is quite curious and when I’m out without the dogs, I occasionally see it. It never acts too wary and if anything, it looks as though it wants to play.

Black vultures, the more southerly cousins of the more ubiquitous Turkey vulture, are now gliding overhead again on sunny days.

The animals take advantage of every warm and sunny day to get out and about. No longer do weeks pass with them and me holed up in a warm spot. Winter isn’t over, but the sun is now stronger and warmer than it was just a week or so. There’s a sense that the days of unending cold with no immediate hope of a warm-up are passing. Oh, it will be cold again before spring, but even on cold days the sun feels warm. For today, that’s enough.

Ennui

I’m a tad bored with how the forest looks today. I know it’s just me. I know it won’t last. It’s just that not a lot is going on in the woods right now. During my mid-summer doldrums, the forest seems not to change very much, and today I see the same thing but during winter.

In summer, I’m surrounded by an unending sea of greenery, and I reach a point where I long for something different. Right now I feel the same way. I have a lot of brown in the landscape and not much else. I don’t see much new or much different to look at. My need for variety is not being met at the moment.

Now, don’t get me wrong—I’m not looking for anything as dramatic as a blizzard or, heaven forbid, another ice storm. I’m just hoping for a little spice, a splash of color, a pretty sunset, a semi-unusual bird or maybe a sighting of the coyote that I haven’t seen for a year. Something like that to contrast with the ocean of brown around me, to grab my attention, if only briefly.

I know it will come. It might be tonight or tomorrow. It could take longer, though I hope not. I do know it won’t take long. That’s the way of the woods. Nothing stays the same for long.

February quiet

It’s not spring here on Roundtop, and if I had any doubt of that I did have snow and sleet yesterday. Barely-late- or late-mid-February is never spring, though I am already starting to see inklings of of the season's change around me in the forest.

Scent: Even with yesterday’s little snow, the forest air no longer has that crisp, cold scent to it that associate with winter. The scent also certainly isn’t the scent of warming ground. It’s something in between.

Sound: Birds are singing in the morning again, and it’s more than just the cardinals who will sing at the drop of a hat, even in mid-winter. Now, it’s also the Carolina wren and the titmice and the twittering of the juncos.

Sight: Birds and animals. Northern flickers don’t actually migrate but they often travel down off the mountain and into sheltered valleys to spend the winter. They are back up on the mountain again. Turkey vultures and even a black vulture or two ply the skies on warmer days. Rabbits are out all the time. Last night I had a raccoon on the back deck again. It was raiding the bird feeder.

These aren’t signs of spring. They are simply signs that winter is easing and that the depths of the season are past. Another cold spell, another storm will send birds and animals scurrying back into roosts and dens to wait it out all over again. But when that happens the retreat won’t be for as long nor the storm’s aftermath as severe. The days are lengthening and the sun sets ever further in the north each day.

Snowy night

Snow is in short supply here this winter. Oh, I see an inch or two or three but every time a half-decent storm appears, it ends up as ice or rain. The snows I have had, such as they are, have been pretty little things. The snow sticks to every little twig and blade of grass or winter-deadened vine, so the mountain looks sugar-coated. Of course, the slightest breeze dislodges the powdery stuff, but until that happens it’s really pretty.

I had one of those pretty little snows the other night and tried to get a photo before a breeze knocked it all off the trees. The resulting photo doesn’t look quite how it looked that night at the cabin--all white and fresh and still--but the result I did get is still okay.

This delicate little snow didn't survive much past the next morning's sunrise. The temperature never warmed above freezing but the sun is brighter and stronger now and even a cold sun is strong enough to melt snow. Winter is already more than half over and the sun grows stronger ever day.

Cat and squirrel

Living in the woods brings not just me into closer contact with forest residents. Even my indoor cats gets to see more of them than is likely the norm. The bird feeder, of course, is an ever-fascinating source of entertainment for them. But it’s not just the birds they get to see.

Saturday brought a squirrel and cat encounter that was even closer than what you see here. For a few seconds the squirrel and the cat were within half an inch of each other, though separated by two panes of glass. Each stared at the other, and they even appeared to "touch" noses at each other. Unfortunately that was a photo that didn’t get taken, mostly because the cat’s body blocked the view of the squirrel right beside it.

Even the indoor cats aren’t limited to seeing just birds and squirrels, though. One day both were glued to the window staring outside, so I had to look, too, to see what they were finding so entrancing. That day I discovered a red fox nosing around in the brush just a few feet behind the cabin. We all got to watch it poking under downed logs and sniffing the leaves for several minutes before it finally moved on. Who knew that cats would be so interested in a fox?

Deer are commonly seen by Dog and Baby Dog during our morning or evening walks. There’s nothing that gets a dog revved up quite like the scent and sight of a deer. I have the arm muscles to prove that one. I suppose the cats have seen deer, too, but they don’t appear to care about them one way or the other.

Raccoons also rev up the dogs, and when I hear Baby Dog’s full-throated roar of outrage, I can almost bet one of the raccoons is up on the front deck. The cats tend to be more interested than outraged by the raccoons, and I’ve seen a few almost scarily close encounters between them. All that separated them was a rather rickety door screen, and I thought that was just a little too close for my comfort, if not theirs. Either side of that encounter could likely have torn through that old thing without drawing a deep breath.

Normal

The wind that howled across the mountain yesterday no longer shrieks nor drowns out conversation. The relief is almost palpable as the forest life around me resumes to something approaching normalcy.

Yesterday, Dog and I walked right up to a deer at the end of the lane, startling both me and the deer, though Dog reacted faster than either of us and was ready to herd it (as I would say) or chase it (as another might claim). The wind was so loud and from a direction that did not reveal us to be so close until we were nearly on top of it. This morning, we heard the same deer in much the same location, but it also heard us and stomped away before we could see more than the white flag of its tail.

Temperatures are now falling from their record-high levels to near normal ones, as well. Tonight the mountain will fall solidly below freezing again for the first time in nearly a week, though I had skim ice in the puddles this morning. In other words, the local trees likely won’t be affected by this brief warm-up and will go back to slumbering again, if they aren’t already.

So winter is not yet dead, for which I am grateful. In these days of milder winters, normal feels like something of a gift, the gift of one more season where the forest can continue as it has for millennia, where the threat of climate change is for the moment still more threat than reality in my little corner of the forest.

Normal is relative, of course, but I take what comfort I can find, where I can find it.

It was a dark and scary night

Wind scares me more than just about anything else does here in the cabin. The idea of one of the large oaks toppling over and hitting the cabin is never far from my mind when the wind howls as it did last night. Winds gusted over up to 60 mph and were sustained at not much less than that.

Anything that wasn’t nailed down disappeared. The dog gate fell over and banged on the back deck. I heard some kind of metallic clanging somewhere down around Roundtop. I lost power several times, though not for any length of time. I didn’t get much sleep once the wind started.

Once, a large tulip poplar perhaps 30 feet from the cabin toppled over in an east wind (not the typical wind direction here) and took out a total of 16 other trees with it. I counted them because the whole fiasco surprised me too. A few of those were also good-sized trees, with the rest smaller ones. I wasn’t at the cabin when that happened—probably a good thing. The tree still lays where it fell. The uprooted base served as a fox den for at least one litter of kits.

I have been at the cabin when other trees have fallen in the forest. For the most part I don’t hear them when it happens. I feel them, like a little earthquake. The ground will vibrate under my feet for a few seconds to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the distance and the size of the tree. Sometimes when the trees are fairly close I can hear them hit the ground. That invariably sets the dogs to barking.

Fortunately, the large oaks that surround my little cabin are still standing this morning. They all look healthy enough and are straight and tall. It’s just that when the ground is soft and the wind is high, well, things can happen.

A sunrise story

Sometimes a sunrise is more than a just pretty sunrise on a February morning.

I saw this view as I was leaving the mountain this morning, and the first thing I thought was that this sunrise means rain. Not the heavy kind of all-day soaking rain but the showery kind of rain. And not even a wide-spread event but the kind where tomorrow I run into someone who lives about 5 miles from me and they say, "We had a nice little shower yesterday." Then, I say, "Huh! I didn’t get anything." That kind of rain.

This is the kind of sky that can delude you into thinking it’s not going to rain at all but if you’re camping and you don’t put the tent fly up so you can enjoy a nice winter night during the February thaw, you can be sure you’ll wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of raindrops on the tent and then you have to get out of your nice warm sleeping bag and fumble with the tent fly in the dark. That kind of rain.

Amazing, isn’t it, how one little sunrise can tell such a story?

Thaw

Likely this thaw won’t last. It’s not uncommon to have a January thaw in this area that lasts for several days or a week. We didn’t have a January thaw this year. It waited until February for that. If this thaw lasts more than a week or so, it will be both unusual and cause for concern. Rising sap could cause the buds to appear and everything from fruit trees to dogwood blossoms could then be damaged or destroyed when the weather returns to normal again.

But for a few days, I won’t worry about that just yet. For now, it was enough to be out in the sun on a warm day and enjoy a vacation from winter without ever leaving the area. At this point, one or two days into the thaw, there’s no sign of spring. There’s simply mud and decaying leaves, wet and flattened from weeks of being covered by snow and ice. This is a good thing. It means last year’s leaves are already turning into forest loam. Some years, when it is dry through the winter, last year’s leaves greet the spring still crunchy and not much decayed. A normally wet and snowy winter moves that process along nicely.

The other thing I noticed is the number of trees with marcescent leaves, such as those in today’s photo. In this area, that pretty much means I’m looking at a lot of American beech trees, though a very few others, often oak, will have them, too. Marcesence simply means that the trees hold on to their leaves until the new leaves push them off in the spring. Sometimes, as the new leaves are just starting to come out, you’ll see both the new leaves and last year’s leaves on the same tree.

Scientists argue about what causes marcesence and whether its effects are positive or negative. Sometimes one will say the effect is positive when another calls the same effect negative. I find their arguments interesting but so far have found nothing in them to get overly concerned about. Here on Roundtop, marcesence on beech trees simply is a normal way of the forest’s life.

Pretty winter sunset (aka Experiment 2)

Seeing this pretty winter sunset last evening has given me an idea for another one of my experiments. Long time readers of Roundtop Ruminations might remember that last spring I took one photo a week of the same spot in my back forest so I could see how that spot went from winter to summer.

If you’ve forgotten or want to see the results, check my Labels for the blog and look under "Experiment." Here’s the short version: for several weeks you didn’t see much change and then it suddenly "exploded" with greenery.

Anyway, while I was looking at the sunset last evening, what I noticed was how far to the south the sunset was, much further than it is in summer. This sun is now setting in the southwest. In summer, it will set in the northwest. So I’m going to occasionally show where the sun sets, likely no more often than once a month. I should have taken a photo on December 21 when the sun was at its furthest point to the south, but I didn’t have the idea then. At some point, likely in May, I will need to move take my photo at a slightly different spot than I am today, because the summer greenery will block my view. But the new spot will still show the same general view of Nell’s Hill (or likely Flat Mtn. to the north by then).

The new series of photos will be called Experiment 2 in the blog Labels. Sometimes I think I’m just too easily amused.

A few tracks

I had a tiny bit of snow from that big nor’easter that rolled up the east coast the other night. So I’ve had some nice fresh snow to look at the tracks of the animals that I share the forest with. Partly because I’ve been holed up in the cabin to avoid the ice that has covered the ground for the past week or so, I haven’t been out as much as I usually am. The animals, too, hole up somewhat so we are more likely to miss seeing each other than is normal. But they’re still around.

The fresh snow is great for seeing the tracks they make and reassure me that the animals are still around and doing okay. This first set is the red fox, who routinely travels down the lane. This one is moving at a nice comfortable pace, likely that easy-going trot they use most of the time.

Snow isn’t the best medium for observing tracks, and powdery snow isn’t even the best of that. The slightest bit of wind or sun will start to deform the shape of the track. The track furthest on the left is the one where you can most clearly see the shape of the fox’s footprint, especially the two claws at the top of the track.

The next two tracks are both rabbits, the first is one where the rabbit is just hopping along the way rabbits do. In the second photo the front and back feet are spaced further apart, which means the rabbit was moving faster than in the first set. The rabbit tracks are also in the lane up the mountain, quite close to the fox tracks, and I have to wonder if the rabbit bolted to avoid the fox (whose visible tracks don’t show that it speeded up).

I saw other tracks too—deer, raccoon and a mouse or vole I couldn’t identify. It doesn’t take much snow for mouse tracks to be hard for me to identify. Half an inch or so and their little bellies and feet are dragging through the snow, deforming their own tracks as they move along.

In any event, a quick walk around the cabin tells me a lot about which residents are around and awake and what they’re doing while I’m inside staying warm during the long, dark evenings.

More red-bellied woodpecker

I hope it comes as no surprise to anyone that I am posting a few more of my red-bellied woodpecker photos. I do promise this will be the last of them. I was lucky enough to have my camera handy on Saturday afternoon when the woodpecker landed, though I moved very, very sloooowwwly as I raised the camera because I was scared to death that the bird would fly before I snapped at least one photo.

For a few brief moments, however, the planets aligned and I had both a red-bellied woodpecker in one hand and a camera in the other. The camera worked, the auto-focus worked and the photos were clear. Miracle of miracles. I guess it's okay now if I never win the lottery, because I've won another kind of lottery, one that's nearly as rare.

I've studied the photos fairly intensively (as you might imagine) since I took them, and I think the bird does look a bit on the rough side, perhaps a bit worse for wear. Hopefully, a few hours at my feeders helped with that, but of course I will never know.