BREAKING ICE, PILEATED, COOPERS & SCREECH

COOL!  I've always wanted to play icebreaker with my canoe!  Today was the perfect day; temps in the low 60s, but still ice on the pond from last night and Wednesday when the temperature never got out of the low 30s!  The ice was just crunchy enough to make a lot of icy noise, but I could paddle into it.  Blake thought it was somewhat unsettling! Poor pup.

 The Pileated woodpecker is around!  Michael said they've seen it several times, Linda & I saw and heard it the other evening in the tree where the screech owl lived last spring, and I saw it again the next morning in a tree in our front yard.  

A Coopers hawk is frequenting our bird feeder - I think it was probably a Coopers that I saw last week when I didn't get a real good look at it and thought it might have been a Sharp-shinned.  

And we have a screech owl who serenades us in our pre-dawn time on our porch.  Great birds around the pond.

POND ICES OVER

The temps were in the lower single digits when I took Blake out for his morning walk (about 5:30 AM) on Thursday, January 3.  It was the first day that the pond was totally frozen over with no soft ice and no water around the edges.  Later in the afternoon, I went out to follow the tracks, which I think are fox, and see if the fox is using the den by the pond.  Didn't see any tracks to or from that area, but had fun following to and fro.  One part looked like the fox must have been chasing something as it kept weaving in and out, but I didn't see any other tracks of the prey.

There is a very odd set of tracks in our yard, longish with no foot prints showing and spaced about 5 feet apart - looks like someone was running and leaping.  Unfortunately, this was 4 days after the snow, so much of the clarity is gone.

The ice looked odd -- there were circles (crop circles?) textured into the ice.  You can kind of see it in the picture.

Swirls in the ice

(The stream bed that looks like running water is actually iced over)

Nice to be out around the pond today.  :-)

BRRR....

It's a frosty, chilly morning - wonderfully seasonal. This morning when I was out with the dog (about 5:15), the sky was totally clear and the stars bright.  Venus was in the east and Jupiter so big in the west that it looked the size of several of the other stars.  The ground crunched frozen under my feet, and the Rhodies were curled and pendant.  The thermometer agreed that it was chilly - 25 degrees.  

More ice on the pond this morning; there has been some ice for the past few days, but today it covers most of the lower end of the pond (the big part where the dam is) and has reached up here to the middle section (the water flows faster up stream).  I've always wanted to play icebreaker and launch my canoe into the icing water, but alas, my shoulder says I should not; it will have to wait for another fall.  

Meanwhile the cove in front of our house and Carol & Joe's house is mostly clear of ice.  Saturday, the Great Blue Heron hung out there almost all day.  We watched it seeking lunch.  I've never managed to see a GBH catch and swallow so clearly before.  We watched it eat 4 fish. The bird would tilt its head with one eye facing the water (so that it could see more clearly out of its eye without the beak in the way?) and suddenly strike!  This one was good! We only saw it miss once in the time we watched.  After eating a bit, it sat on the shore at our landing.  Further from shore, there was a whole flotilla of black duck in the cove, upending to get plant material and a king fisher flew by chittering.  Five hooded mergansers, 2 males and 3 females were diving; they seemed to be having good fishing as well!  Good to know that the fish are thriving; I read that one of the issues when a pond it covered with the water chestnuts, is that the chestnuts choke the pond, both using too much of the oxygen and also creating mats of vegetation that are hard to swim through.  Hopefully we will be able to keep on top of the water chestnuts from now on!

So do the muskrats swim across the pond when there is ice forming on it?  Gotta watch!
Stay warm, all; and instead of complaining about the cold, bundle up and get out in it and watch nature.

Icing Begins on the Pond