After the predictions that continued all day yesterday, we expected to wake up to noticeable snow this morning, and we did, kinda, but not at all what we expected, just a bare dusting of scattered flakes that, even at this latitude, they’d be embarrassed to call, “snow.” I went out to capture what I could, since I needed to do the month-end pics anyway, and spent a little time both cataloging the conditions and trying to be fartsy with it. We have Duck Island here, right where the ducks and geese and nutrias all come up to feed, and you’ll see this area in greater detail if I ever get the video clips finished.
The curious thing about this is, there was a lot more ice yesterday morning, pretty much the entire right half of this frame, since I was scattering corn across it. The temperature did not climb very high at all yesterday and dropped again overnight, so I don’t understand this. The best I can say is, the shifting wind might have driven more deeper (and thus warmer) water from The Bayou, at the top of the frame here, in this direction.
Here we have some evidence of the nightly activity, plates of ice that had been broken free and shifted around, then re-frozen into place. Either beaver or nutria were responsible, and I’m leaning towards the former. It’s a really weird sound to hear at night, and I’m not sure I’ve captured it adequately yet.
Playing with the composition of more lonely snowflakes on the ice, this time above a pin oak leaf beneath. There was only so close that I could get, since I was leaning out over ice that wouldn’t even come close to supporting my weight, and the ground wasn’t even frozen – the pond edge was treacherously soft. I could get slightly closer for the next one:
Yeah, practically the same thing, and even oriented the same way in the frame. I’ll work on my variety.
In the side yard, about 10 meters or so from the bird feeders (which we’ve been taking in at night since the second bear raid,) I found this:
Yep – that’s bear shit, and not in the woods either. One of the neighbors reported a raid on her own feeders, and another spotted it at about five AM one morning, perhaps two weeks ago. I initially wasn’t sure how long this had been there since I couldn’t recall the last time I’d passed this spot, but then remembered that I’d gone right by this refilling watering cans yesterday. It’s possible that I walked right past without noticing, but that’s not like me, and I think it’s likely that it really did occur this past night. We have one motion alert camera active (of which this sits outside of its reach) and I’m trying to get more set up – that’s what I spent part of today trying to accomplish, without success yet. However, there will be a slight edge tonight, which we’re getting to.
One last pic of the pond, this time Turtle Island (on the left) with the ice now bearing slightly more evidence of the sleet that had begun at that time.
Again, that’s a fair amount of open water for a portion that was completely sealed over yesterday. But I include this because, about 2 PM this afternoon, things finally started in earnest.
It is still snowing as I type this, a pretty good coating that has almost entirely obscured the tracks I left getting these images. Depending on when it stops, this may mean there will be distinctive evidence if the bear visits again, though without finding the feeders now, it might be bypassing us.
Not too fartsy here, a bit busier than I wanted it to be and with greatly reduced contrast from the poor light, but at least it shows how much had fallen after two and a half hours. I also revisited the same subject from this morning, with its subtle change now:
Again, manual focus, which was even more difficult because I had the rain cover on over the camera and so was looking through a layer of clear plastic over the viewfinder – I’ll have to make some modification to that. This took several frames to get one that was sharp enough, also hampered by the fact that I had a mask on because my sinuses couldn’t stand the cold air today, and what this mostly accomplished was fogging up my glasses. The things I do for you guys…
When it first started in earnest, I went to the upstairs window and my duck-spotting perch and tried to get a few pics of the ducks swimming around with a blanket of snow on their backs, but the distance was too great:
Yeah, that’s nothing but the 50 meters or so of falling snow between the camera and the ducks, and this was as good as it got. Once I was down in the yard, the ducks headed out for The Bayou as usual, still not at all cool with our presence, even though we’re the ones putting down all the corn. Ingrates.
I got a slight opportunity for something else, though. This was what the lamp on the back porch looked like:
The funnel weaver spiders simply adore two prime locations on the back porch: the one window, and this lamp. It doesn’t matter how many times I clear the webs away, they’re back within three days, but at least this one was serving to capture the snow ‘in midair,’ as it were, and that included some small clusters of snowflakes, without any ability for them to melt together into a mess. So I changed over to the macro lens and made a few attempts along those diagonal strands.
That’s not too shabby for a casual effort, without even an extension tube. The flakes were actually pretty big (even when they were cut in half.)
I may go out now that it’s dark and do a few time exposures by available light, though it won’t be many; I wanted to get these out while it was still January, get in one more post and 12 more images and all that. Plus I’m procrastinating over editing video clips…