Cottonwood Pond: First Snow of 2016

First Snow of 2016

January 10, 2016

Finally, after a very mild winter – the first snow!

It as a nice, thick, fluffy one, sticking to all trunks, branches and twigs.

Down at Cottonwood Pond, the water was covered with a thick layer of ice and a dusting of snow. The surface must have fully frozen during the latter part of the snowfall, absorbing snowflakes that fell before then. If is had already been frozen, it would have been covered by a thick layer of snow.

I got to see birds in action at Cottonwood Pond.

Next to the pond was a Slate-Colored Junco eating seeds from a bent grass plant.

Grass seed on the snow where the Junco was dining

Near the Bent Blue Beech, a male Downy Woodpecker was digging into wood and exploring between layers of bark to find dormant larvae.

All around, there were beautiful designs in ice and snow:

The Seep, surrounded by dry grass plants, winding its way from the pond corner to the Creek.

An ice "hatchet"

Where overflow from the pond corner goes into the Seep, left, and where water flows from "little pond" through the Isthmus, top, to the main pond

Some of the most interesting designs, telling stories of what went on a little earlier, were the tracks of birds and other animals in the snow and on the ice.

Some had been scrambling over logs.

Squirrel tracks

Birds

Others were approaching the pond area in the snow.

The most fun tracks to see were of birds trying to negotiate the slippery surface of the main pond, “little pond” and the Isthmus.

There was a lot of slip-sliding going on!

At the Inlet

At the Cove

And sometimes wing prints, or even whole body prints, appeared on the snow, perhaps from birds trying to find their balance.

I think the most beautiful print I saw was that of a whole bird, wings outspread, on the side of the Cottonwood Trunk. I have to wonder if it just ran into the Trunk or was going after something.