Cold Pleasures and Treasures

Long-time readers of this blog will know that I really do find much to love about winter's cold and snow and ice. But it does take a few early outings to reset my inner thermostat from misery to toleration to actual enjoyment of winter's frigid charms. This year, the cold and snow arrived earlier than usual, and I'd probably still be huddling indoors if my pal Sue Pierce hadn't poked me to get on out and start the toleration process. Sue also urged our pal Dana to join us at Moreau Lake State Park this past Monday, where Sue took this photo of Dana and me on the breezy lakeshore, where I'm still huddling within several layers of thick winter garments, while Dana appears quite comfortable hatless and wearing bluejeans. I believe the temps were still below 20. And a brisk breeze was trying to worm inside my winterwear defenses. Brrrr!

Photo by Sue Pierce

We shortly sought the windless shelter of the lakeside forest, which also offered the body-warming challenge of climbing up some hills.

Our goal was to see how the freezing cold might have festooned with crystalline beauty the creek that tumbles down the mountainside here.

But since the creek held only a very small trickle of water, the energetic splashing that in other winters has tossed up fabulous icy bank-side accretions was minimal so far this year.  And the water that collected in pools was not yet frozen.

So, OK, let's just take a walk across the bridge and along the trail, to see what we can find of interest. We could actually feel the warmth of pale sunlight without a brisk wind blowing any warmth away.

It was fun to try to ID what we saw along the trail.  These tiny fleur-de-lis shapes littering the snow are the scales from the seedpods of some species of birch.  I'm not sure which species.  Both Black Birch and Gray Birch are common in this woods. 

I did recognize these bristly little teardrop-shaped seedpods as those of the wildflower called Enchanter's Nightshade.

And this slender branching plant with its hard, split seedpods was probably Sweet Cicely, a lime-loving wildflower. We knew that lime-rich marble boulders were present not far away.

And this squiggly remnant of some kind of vine was most likely from one of our wild grapes.

Glimpses through the trees of the blue lake and its sun-lit shores tempted us to return to those shores. Perhaps we might see some waterfowl, or even a Bald Eagle fishing the wide-open water.

As we approached the lakeshore, we were excited to observe the trails of Otters sliding along through the snow.

Some well-defined paw-prints confirmed that these were indeed Otter trails.

And look where those Otters were heading: right into the icy-cold water of the lake. Otters have such thick furry coats, the cold water never reaches their skin.  And of course, the lake waters hold the fish that Otters love to eat.

We next discovered the Otters' latrine, right next to the shore. I bet if we'd poked the stuff apart, we'd have found some fish scales among it.

Although the lake was mostly still unfrozen, there were wide shelves of ice along this north-facing shore. Some of the ice was even thick enough that we could walk on it.  In this photo, Sue is using her camera's zoom to photograph the Muskrat she has spied walking on a similar ice shelf some distance down the shore.

I noticed a trail on the snow-dusted ice close to shore, and the prints of small feet bunched together indicated that this was possibly the trail of a Mink, another Weasel Family member that enters the water even in winter to hunt for fish. A Mink's gait reminds me of an inchworm, looping along. They also sometimes slide on their bellies as the Otters do, just not as frequently or for such long distances.

Walking along the shore close to where the ice met the water, we finally encountered some of the icy beauty that makes our chilled discomfort dismissible. These glistening baubles seemed to glow with a shining light.

In places, the ice had frozen as clear as glass, except where the freezing had captured rafts of bubbles, both miniature and bulbous.

Where wavelets had tossed up droplets on the underside of this icy shelf, they promptly froze there, creating lines of small circles that resembled strings of glass beads.

Bubbles of gas released by decomposing underwater organic matter were trapped in the ice, resembling silver coins.

Wow!  While I could understand how some of these frozen ice features might have been formed, the forces that created this frieze of vertical lines remains a mystery to me. Did some strong vibration occur before the slushy ice turned hard? Or what? I really cannot imagine!

So there! Sometimes enduring winter's cold seems just too daunting for me. And then I see something like this.

A Sunset Transformation!

A photo of sunset-burnished treetops showed up in my Facebook Memories today, and I wondered if I could find the original higher-resolution copy in my photo files.  Which I did, in a folder from 11/29/15.  In that same folder, I also found my photo of the nearly identical scene taken an hour or so earlier, before the lowering sun had set the gray leafless treetops afire with blazing color. Wow! What an amazing transformation! 

A late-fall afternoon on the Hudson River, with West Mountain rising beyond the far bank. The scene was pleasant enough, but the leafless trees on this mid-river island look colorless in the late-afternoon light. But just wait !

Ta da! Just an hour or so later, a lowering sun set the leafless trees on this mid-river island ablaze! The very same scene, transformed by light!

I never know what surprising delights Mother Nature has in store for me.  I'm so glad I preserved these moments in photos, and also that I filed these two photos in a way that allowed me to find them again.

A New Month, New Snow, and a Catch-up Blogpost

 

Here comes December, and here came some SNOW! Some pretty snow, too, soft and sparkly and about 6 inches, and I hope it's the first of many lovely snowfalls to come. But before I get distracted by all the glittering charms of winter, I do want to post some photos of the most recent walk I and my friends in our Thursday Naturalist group enjoyed during the waning days of November.

We visited Anchor Diamond Park, which contains 246 acres of conserved woodlands and trails, located at the historic site of the former Hawkwood Estate a few miles south of Ballston Spa, New York.  Now permanently protected through a conservation easement by Saratoga PLAN (Preserving Land And Nature), this preserve is owned by the Town of Ballston and open to the public year-round. The park honors the wishes of the late Frank Schidzick Jr., whose Trust purchased the property and generously gifted it to the Town in 2015. Today, Anchor Diamond Park is a place for visitors to connect with nature and enjoy the beautiful landscape. 

Our Thursday group has visited Anchor Diamond Park more than a few times over recent years, but this time we opted to follow a longer route than in past visits, one that took us along the main Hawkwood Trail until we reached the Hemlock Loop, the trail colored yellow on the map pictured below.  This took us into a part of this preserve several of us had not visited before.

Before we reached the Hemlock Loop, we enjoyed exploring some of the evidence of human occupancy of this estate many years ago, not just the visible remains of the original Hawkwood Mansion, but also the crumbling foundations of other buildings that lined the wide Hawkwood Trail. We had not yet experienced a killing frost in Saratoga County, so many green plants and occasional late-blooming wildflowers were still evident in such sheltered havens.

As we followed the Hawkwood Trail into the heart of the preserve, we walked beneath towering trees that soared over our heads like the arched ceiling of a cathedral.

Some of the trees were very old, especially many huge Black Locusts, now dead and disintegrating but still quite monumental, even in their considerable decline.

We paused to ponder what had occurred to cause these sturdy twin trunks to curve in this way.

As we walked along, we were often accompanied by the sounds of the rippling Delavan Creek that runs throughout the preserve. 

Shortly after entering the Hemlock Loop, we encountered this old stone fireplace, standing alone on the forest floor, with no evidence of any building having ever surrounded it.

Apparently, we were not the first people to ponder the origin of this fireplace, according to a sign that was posted at the site:

As we moved further along the Hemlock Trail, we were dismayed to find evidence of the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid infesting the trees. We could only hope that biological controls, such as the release of other insects that prey on the adelgid larvae, would help to save some of the hemlock trees that were concentrated in this part of the preserve.

Avoiding physical contact with the needles of infested hemlocks, we concentrated our explorations on the remains of fallen trees scattered about the forest floor.  Here, Tom and Sue have found a stump populated by quite an assortment of interesting fungi.

The fungi came in quite a colorful assortment on this particular stump. I see bright-yellow Lemon Drop Fungus, a copper-colored sac fungus, some blue-green Blue Stain Fungus, some lumps of hard dark-brown fungus riddled with tiny holes,  some flat brown caps I can't identify, some orange Eyelash Fungus, and a whitish stuff that might be a lichen or slime mold.  I hardly bother to try using the scientific names of fungi, so many names have changed since my old mushroom guides were published.

I used to know that Eyelash Fungus as Scutellinia scutellata, but I have since learned there might be many different species that all look a lot like this.  Can you see the tiny dark "eyelashes"?

A knothole on another stump held a nice group of the tiny fruiting bodies of Blue Stain Fungus surrounded by bright green moss.

Is this compact clump of bright-orange stuff the fungus called Orange Jelly?  Or is it Witches' Butter? One grows on hardwood, the other on conifers.  I can't remember which wood this was. It was quite an impressive clump of fungus, whichever one it is!

I am glad I remember the name of this small gilled fungus with an "innie" bellybutton on top, which often grows in bright-orange masses on rotting conifer wood.  Its scientific name is Xeromphalina campanella, which means something like "small bells with dry bellybuttons."

One of the vernacular names for Xeromphalina campanella is Fuzzy Foot.  It's often difficult to detect any fuzziness of its feet, but this particular population yielded a perfect example of how it got that name:

We found many pretty mosses and low-growing plants throughout Anchor Diamond Park, but this red-berried, green-leaved groundcover  called Partridgeberry seemed the most appropriate for anticipating the upcoming Christmas season.  Wishing a happy holiday season for all of my readers!