A More Accurate Representation

 

The picture of the pond in the previous post may have misled you. We did not get any appreciable snowfall as is evidenced by the photo above.

Temperatures rose into the mid-40s yesterday and are expected to flirt with 50 today. I just finished a 10-day shift, so today is my Saturday -- I feel a hike in my future ;)

Sunrise

 

Yesterday morning I stopped by the pond on my way to work. It was frozen with a super-light dusting of snow.

Man, I love this place more than you can ever imagine.

Today's Favorite Finds

It was cold out today -- maybe not by Adirondack standards, but definitely by southern swamp standards. But cold or not, we ventured out to see what might be about. Not a lot as it turned out. However, there were two cool finds of the day.

My find was this bit of bobcat scat on the walkway. Needless to say, it is all gathered up now and residing in a plastic cup awaiting proper dissection. I know Ellen will understand ;) A cursory appraisal revealed the jaw bones of several rodents and a bird beak. Once I get all the parts separated I'll have a go at trying to ID some of the critters what got et.

 

Treebeard's sharp eye spotted this well camouflaged potter wasp nest on the trunk of a pawpaw tree. Not sure which species crafted this particular pot. If I can find it again I will try to keep an eye on it and see when the wasp emerges.

 

They're predicting highs in the low 40s tomorrow. Please let them be right!!!

Another Lousy Photo

It was too cold to get out and creep up on this kingfisher. Instead, I just lowered the window and powered up to 48X. The result? A lousy photo, but a warm Swampy ;)

These birds are usually so sleek - it was odd to see one all puffed out against the cold.

 

Other sightings today included a bobcat and an otter. No photos to share of those, I'm afraid.

Typical

See the snow?
Yeah, me neither.
You'd think after a week in the deep freeze, with night time temps in the teens, that we would see at least a flake of snow...but no. The temperature went up just enough last night so that it rained, then the temperature hovered in the mid to upper 30s for the whole day today. This weekend it is supposed to be cold and windy, again.

Just doesn't seem fair somehow.

The ice in the swamp was interesting this morning. Lots of trapped bubbles and several patches like this where water drops formed on the underside.

 

Frisky Whitetails

Across the canal, high on the bank, there was much frolicking in the late afternoon sun.

 

 

 

Uncooperative Grebe

Late this afternoon, down by the bridge, a pied-billed grebe was teasing me. It would swim close when I didn't have my camera and then when I'd get my camera, it swam just out of range. Now you know that little bird was doing it on purpose, don't you? ;)

The least blurry of all my blurry shots...

 

A lot of the shots ended up being of ripples on the water as the grebe dived...

 

But, as you can tell from this shot, the little sucker was hard to see when it did pop up!

 

Oh well, I had fun watching it and that's all that really matters.

Frozen

The swamp is freezing...

...and there are floes of icy foam on the canal. Okay, so they don't technically meet the definition of floe, but a girl should have some artistic license on her own blog.

Dreary Day, But Getting Better

2009 is ending on a dreary note here. It's foggy and chilly outside, causing me to spend way too much time inside on the computer. For some reason I am feeling nostalgic today and have spent a great deal of time looking for folks I used to know. Facebook can suck away time at an alarming rate ;)

On a cheerier note, today is Treebeard's birthday. Soon I will go downstairs and start his birthday dinner. Something hot and spicy to take the chill off, perhaps? Later we will ring in the New Year with a bottle of champagne -- probably well before midnight, though. Party animals that we are, I imagine we will be fast asleep when the ball drops.

Happy New Year to all you e-people out there in blogland. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you will continue to visit in 2010. Thanks, too, for all your blogs. I always look forward to reading your posts.

Secrets

Some trees hold secrets...

Treebeard had a curious expression on his face as he looked at this tree.

It is a nice-sized live oak growing near the Pamlico River.  The canopy is vigorous and spreads wide.

Wondering what had him perplexed, I walked over to where Treebeard stood regarding the tree.  What I saw had me perplexed, too.  This tree has a secret about a time in its past.  Slowly, but surely, the outer bark is working to cover the traces of a previous calamity...

Wonder what happened here and why? It couldn't have happened too terribly long ago because those look like chainsaw scars. What story would this tree have to tell if it were willing and able to share it secrets?

Peculiar, I Reckon

She is my problem child. Loving, yes, but she has some habits that drive us up the wall. She also has some habits that just make us shake our heads and wonder. For instance, she loves to eat spider webs and can often be found reaching out into the overlooked corners of the room harvesting web with her paws. Odd, don't you think?

But one of her odder habits is pictured below. Every evening when the lamp is switched on, Wiki hops up on the table and sits under the lamp shade.

As she sit there, she stares at the light bulb. Sometimes she even rests her chin on the lamp as she gazes up at the glow.

Weirdness, thy name is Wicket.

Sunshine!

A mysterious, glowing orb appeared in the sky today. A little research revealed that it was the sun -- remarkable! Treebeard, Trekker (formerly known as Hippie on this blog) and I headed out for a hike.

We weren't the only ones enjoying the sunshine. I zoomed my camera to absolute max to snap a picture of basking turtles. They were too far away for me to make a positive ID.

The pond is running high from all of our recent rainfall. At long last it is easy to find open water after a spring, summer, and fall of heavy duckweed cover.

From the far-away to the upclose...
The trunks of beech trees make great spots to find interesting things. Here we have a case-bearing moth doubling as a sundail.

Another photo to add to my critter scat file. Here we have the lovely leavings of a slug. A squiggle of slug scat...

A diminutive spider was soaking up the rays on another beech trunk. It's probably a dolomedes, but I'm not certain.

And chillin' out under a log we found a few nice red-backed salamanders. Hardy little creatures.

What I don't have photos of are the frogs that were out and about. I saw, very briefly, five frogs. Three were cricket frogs and two were southern leopards. None of the five wished to have its photo taken. Too bad.

Monday and Tuesday are supposed to be sunny, too -- we'll see. And of course, the weatherman predicts rain for Treebeard's birthday (known to most of you as New Year's Eve) and New Year's Day.