Today was a great day to poke around over at Caesar Pond. First, I went to our deeded access put-in to check out the state of the ice on the pond. There is a very thin layer of ice which covers the entire south end of the pond.I love seeing the feathery ice crystals forming in new ice. If you look closely, you can even see lots of tiny air bubbles throughout.Then, I went to the south end of the pond as that is where I generally find icicles hanging from the plants that are found at the water's edge. This shows evidence of wind blown water and quick freezing as we did have a good bit of wind from the north and temps down in the upper teens overnight.Later in the afternoon, we did a family walk at the wildlife management's public put-in to see what was happening at the north end of the pond. And, it sure is different here! Look at the open water along the eastern shore of the pond.Drew was thinking that the shoreline looked more open than it had since yesterday. Then, he spied why! A beaver was hard at work last night. There were lots of tiny branches and stems of tiny trees that were gnawed on besides this large tree!Lastly, we came upon this pine cone attached to a branch on the ground. I had a few ideas of what it was in looking at the rough pattern of the wood on the branch. And, one of my guesses was correct. It is an old, and weathered, Pitch Pine cone attached to the branch with the tiniest of stalks. Did you know that these trees produce pitch and turpentine that used to be used as resin materials to maintain wooden sailing ships? Cool...
Yay! We've got snow! A teeny, tiny bit of snow that did not stay around long, but it was pretty nonetheless. On our morning walk, I found some snow still in evidence in shady parts of the forest. Here is snow on Northern Red Oak leaves.
