Spotted a few days ago on the trail among clumps of frozen snow, mud, and wood in all shapes and sizes.
We have just had a couple days at, or near, 72F degrees.
For historical documentation, a snapshot of the Beaver Bog outlet stream from a few days ago is shown below. In early September past, this scene would have shown a bone-dry stream bed.
We are managing the adjustment from the coldest February since the 1980s (allegedly) and have gotten above freezing almost every day over the last two weeks. The pace of snowfall has slowed down. We have only about 6-9 inches of snow cover and it is fairly solid and crispy.
The middle bog is shown at left.
We are not finding very many birds in the woods nor around our house. A few woodpeckers, nuthatches, and chickadees every so often. During mid-week, we saw a pair of eagles slowly circling near the no-name pond, riding the rising air very high up. A red-tailed or brown-tailed hawk flew over our yard yesterday.
We are waiting for Spring along with the vaccines and an end of the epidemic.