Bolt Hole Photos

On Friday I took a walk around the yard and nearby fields of the Bolt Hole to lok for tracks in the snow. I recounted that in this post. One of the sets of tracks puzzled me. The spacing was wrong for a house cat and not straight enough for a fox. I forgot that the RED fox makes the straightest line of tracks that you ever did see but that the GRAY fox, being slightly huskier in body build has a little swagger to it's strut. Communications last night with Mark confirm that there is a GRAY fox in the area again having returned from wherever when the coyotes moved in. (The Coyotes are still there, Mark says. And in pretty good numbers, too.)

Mark also sent along a bunch of game camera pictures but I've been sworn to super secrecy on posting any of those. Sorry. Last time we let his dad see a picture of a nice buck, we were inundated with new groups of hunters the next year after dear old dad showed it around the local drinking joints/rumor mills.

Mark also answered the question about the cleared driveway. His dad arranged to have them cleared by a buddy of his and Mark had been there on the 19th and did my drive. Our friend Adam, a DEC Ranger, has also been up that way at least a couple times a month as he takes his state snowmobile out to check the trails. He too clears a little to make sure he has a place to park his truck and trailer.

Anyway, I did snap a couple of pictures on my walk.

The Scotch Pines in the yard usually produce a good crop of cones much to the delight of the red squirrel population. The squirrels harvest as many as they can and stash them away for later. When we had firewood stacked out in the yard to season, every nook and cranny held a green pine cone. Even the unheated woodshed and the cabin basement have piles of scales from pine cones that have been opened for the seeds inside. It's a lot of work for a seed that's so small.

The squirrels left this one pine cone along the edge of the yard. I didn't see another on the half dozen trees nearby. Perhaps they just missed it. Or perhaps they're letting it ripen a little longer. Whatever the reason, to me it seems to speak of promises for the future.

A Lone Pine Cone

It was cold Friday morning, not as cold as it would get Saturday but still down into the single digits, and everything had a coat of hoar frost on it that stayed until kissed by the sun. I came across this leafy growth of lichen on a small woody twig and though the greenish gray was a subtle reminder that even in the depths of a cold winter somethings eke out a living from the sun. It wasn't until I put the picture on the computer and cropped it that I noticed the delicate ice crystals along the edge of the frilly lichen.

Icy Lichen

Taking a second short walk after lunch, my eye was caught by a couple of little pinpoints of red against the white of the snow. When I focused upon the little red dots, I realized I was looking at another promise of spring to come--the bud scales of a red maple were already starting to swell with burgeoning life beneath.

Red Maple Buds

My walk was brief as I hadn't put my snowshoes on and every step in virgin snow I sank to just below my knees. That makes walking in the stuff a chore, to say the least. Heading back to the cabin beneath the clear blue sky, I glanced up to see the moon framed between the tops of a few Scotch Pines in the yard. Almost, but not quite a First Quarter, only the fact that it was 2 o'clock in the afternoon confirmed for me that this was a Waxing Crescent.

Waxing Crescent Moon