The Arrival of Winter - A Sign of the Season to Come?

Well, winter suddenly descended last week with a blast of strong wind that was followed a few days later by a thin blanket of snow.  This was enough of a shock to my system - I'm very thankful I don't live in south Buffalo, New York, right now!

While nothing too exciting has happened with this seasonal change, above and beyond earlier-than-usual cold weather with a couple inches of snow, it still seems like I ought to celebrate the arrival of winter with a brief post.  So here goes.

Since there was little transition between the relatively warm fall weather and a cold snap more typical of January than mid-November, quite a few trees and shrubs were caught with leaves in place.  Thankfully, we didn't get ice, so the leaves simply freeze-dried in place.  Some species, like cottonwood, have gone ahead and shed the remainder of their leaves.  Others, like the oaks, are still sporting a green coat.

This is the young Shumard oak that we planted shortly after we moved in.  I wonder how long the leaves will stay green this winter?

My aromatic asters were also still blooming when the cold hit.  Despite their late bloom cycle, this is the first year I've noticed any of their blooms getting caught by winter weather.  The purple is still obvious, 10 days after the cold originally hit.  How long will I have purple "blossoms" coloring the winter landscape?

After snapping a few pictures of the asters, I noted this grayish "growth" on the side of a basket sitting on the front porch.

Recognize it up close?  A praying mantis's egg case.  I'm actually rather surprised that I haven't found more of them, as I had many, many praying mantises in my gardens this year.  I feel rather lucky that all of the mantises I've seen have been the native Carolina mantis, rather than the interloper, the Chinese mantis.

In the back yard, I managed to catch a photo of a white-crowned sparrow hiding on the far side of a rose bush.  I was quite close, but evidently this little beauty felt safely hidden, because it made no move to flush while I stood there.

The most unusual sighting was the set of little tracks going across the driveway, between the redcedar hedge on the south side and the Rose of Sharon on the north side of the driveway.

With the obvious marks of the tail dragging, I'm quite sure it's a rodent of some sort.  Perhaps a hispid cotton rat.  I really don't know how to tell different rodent tracks apart, but I do know that I've got plenty of cotton rats around!

I didn't get out to take photos until 2 days after the snow fell, so I have no glorious shots of snow, quietly sifting out of the sky, or sitting heavily on the branches of the trees, but there was still enough snow around to document the start of winter.

Each year is so unique - I wonder what THIS winter will bring?  Is this early snow the sign of much more to come?  Or is this the only snow we'll get all season?  There's no way to know so, as always, we'll take the new season, day by day, week by week, month by month.  Suspense - natural style.

A Wintery Mix

Saturday brought us the legendary "wintery mix" of precipitation.  Luckily the weather forecasters had seen it coming, because the temperatures dropped along with the precipitation and it's likely to be several more days until the roads are clear again.  We made sure that we had the basics ahead of time so we were able to relax and cocoon all day Sunday.

Cocooning didn't mean confining myself to the house all day, though.  The clouds moved out around noon; mid afternoon found me outside, seeing what I could photograph to share before wind and cold drove me back inside.

Truthfully, I'm glad that we got the moisture, even if it came in a less-than-gentle form and is limiting our mobility a bit for a while.  We've been getting pretty dry.

Everything looked soft and tranquil....

...but certain angles showed the reality beneath the fluffy snow: about 1/4" of ice, coating absolutely everything.

At times like this, thick evergreens are particularly important as shelter for wildlife.  Eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana), our only native evergreen out here on the prairie, is particularly valuable in weather conditions like this.  In the hedge by our driveway, there were all sorts of mammal tracks along and underneath these trees, as well as signs that birds were roosting in the refuge of the thick branches.

Looking across the front tallgrass, colors were rich but the snow seemed muted - captured and contained by the tall prairie grasses covering the soil.  There won't be much runoff here, as the grasses will hold the snow in place as it melts, allowing the soil to absorb the precious moisture.

Behind the house, one of our cats had walked boldly out, through the Courtyard hedge, into the grasses of the Beyond....

...without even stopping to investigate the myriad twisting strands of bird tracks that meandered between and around the plum bushes which grow under the Amur maples that anchor the Courtyard hedge.

A feather on the snow added a small, rather dramatic spot of color and texture....

Skeins of geese laced the sky....

The path to the Back 5 cut through the Indian grass and big bluestem of the Beyond...

...then crossed the draw...

...and skirted the edge of the big grove of redcedars in the Cedar Grove.

On the south end of the Cedar Grove, a pair of redcedars caught the evening sun and looked like rich Christmas trees glinting in a story book tale.

I think we're actually going to have a white Christmas this year.

 

The Cleanup Crew

About ten days ago, I went on a basic walkabout that ended up netting me a whole series of photos that I've had fun sharing.  This is the last of that series - and I apologize, in advance, for the indelicate subject matter.  I found it interesting, though, and it's certainly an important part of real life!

On my Sunday morning walkabout, I came across some indisputable evidence - once again - that we share our property with coyotes.  In the gateway between our Back 5 acres and the front area, I came across a significant pile of coyote scat.  (That's biological talk for poop.  It sounds much more professional to talk about scat, though.)

The scat seemed to be moving, which piqued my curiosity, so I looked at it a bit more closely.

In the center of the pile, almost completely hidden, was a large black beetle - a tumblebug, Canthon sp.  As I sat there waiting to get a good photo, I notice another area of the pile start to move and got glimpses of 2 more tumblebugs hard at work.  This was, unfortunately, the best photo I was able to get without disturbing them at their work.

Tumblebugs are dung beetles.  As their name (and locale) suggests, they get their nourishment from animal dung.  In the case of the tumblebugs, they form large balls of dung which they roll away from the original pile of scat and bury, laying an egg on each ball before sealing it into the ground.  The egg hatches and the tumblebug larva uses the dung as its food source to grow and mature.

Dung beetles are important decomposers.  Despite its "ick" factor, their lifestyle literally helps clean up the world and recycle "waste" nutrients.

As I tried to get photos of the tumblebugs, I couldn't help but notice that the coyote scat was full of grasshopper parts.  Note the grasshopper abdomen just above the tumblebug in the photo above, and the broken piece of grasshopper hind tibia to the right of the beetle.  One of the best ways to learn what a wild animal is eating is to examine their droppings.  This coyote was evidently gorging on grasshoppers, a fact that makes me particularly happy.  This coyote is welcome to come and eat as many grasshoppers as he or she wishes, every day, all day.

Also on this pile were several house-fly sized flies that, nonetheless, looked a little different from "normal" flies.

When I worked to identify them, I found out that they are flesh flies, Sarcophaga sp.  Many flesh flies are actually parasitic or predatory.  (The larvae of at least one species bores into grasshoppers and kills them as they eat.  Despite feeling rather bloodthirsty as I write this, I'm rather hoping that species of flesh fly is very active in my yard this year.)  The species I saw on this pile of coyote scat was evidently one of the flesh flies that, like the tumblebug, is a decomposer, propagating in animal droppings.

There was one other insect on this pile of scat, a very small, irridescent fly - or actually several of them.  I never could get a good enough photo to identify it at all.

The flesh fly is at the top of this photo, for scale.  The small, irridescent fly is on the underside of the...dropping.

This is as good a photo as I could get of the small fly, which isn't good enough for me to identify it without some good guess as to what I'm looking at.


As a final note, when I did another walkabout on Thursday morning, 4 days later, this is all that remained of the coyote scat.  If I hadn't know it was there from Sunday, I would have completely missed it.

Really, all that was left were a bunch of grasshopper parts, evidently pieces of exoskeleton that didn't have any nutritional value left, I guess.

Four days to go from a standard "dog pile" effect to a thin layer of grasshopper parts covering the ground.  That's a cleanup crew, in my mind!

Another Discovery Through Walking

I can't believe how much I get to see just because the boys encourage me to get outside and walk every day.  Truly, I think I'd miss 90% of what's happening around here, if it wasn't for their daily insistence on getting out for a constitutional.

This morning gave me another perfect example.

What do you see in this photo?  Anything besides a messy tangle of trees and vines?

Look a little closer!

As I followed the path beside the draw this morning, I noticed a bit of movement further in, among some vines by the ground.  At first, I thought I was seeing a big feral cat...but a moment's observation showed me what it really was!

Unhurriedly, but without stopping, the raccoon climbed the vines, seeming to pause only briefly to check me out.

He (she?) clambered onto the branch...

walked along it without changing pace...

climbed onto the trunk...

and disappeared!  One moment it was there and the next moment it was gone.  I watched for a couple minutes more, but saw no further movement.

So I continued on, along the west side of the draw, looking more closely at the tree (especially the area where the raccoon disappeared) when I came closer.  Nothing obvious there....

Then I went around to the east side of the draw...and this is what I saw through the brush.

Walking a little further on, I was able to get an even clearer view.

That, however, was the best I could do without getting on to the muddy, overgrown floor of the draw itself.

I've occasionally seen tracks I thought were raccoon.  Now I've seen who made them!