December is here, and Old Man Winter is tightening his grasp on Lake Wicwas. As the temperature drops the ice is spreading out farther and farther from the edges of the lake. These pictures are from December first; today it was too foggy to see what was happening out there, but early in the morning, it appeared as though the ice had covered much of the lake.
With warm weather forecast this week, it probably will reopen again. The little bit of snow that fell helped the ice along, as it made a thin layer of slush on the surface.
I saw nice healthy gray squirrel hopping along the ice, taking advantage of a fast and direct route, and I also found fox tracks crossing over the thin ice in a marsh.
Brave animals, these first pioneers out on the ice.
There wasn't much snow - less than an inch - but it set a pretty picture
around the lake, and and did allow looking for tracks to see what's been
visiting the lake.
On shore, I tracked this same pair of foxes trotting a long distance on one of the trails around the lake. They went right across the path of moose, though the moose passed before the snow fell. It left a different clue of its presence.
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| Moose Scat |
This scattering of scat was deposited over a five foot diameter!
The diet of the moose has changed from the water-loaded diet of aquatic vegetation to a much drier diet of land based plants, as clearly seen in the individual pellets.
Looking back at these pictures, I realized that there wasn't much color around Lake Wicwas this week!
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