February 21, 2021: Blue, Blue Skies

The snow conditions haven't been very good for tracking lately.  First we had some rain which put a crust on the top of snow preventing any tracks from registering except for the deer which have sufficient weight on tiny hooves to break through the crust.  But for obvious reasons, they don't much like walking around in those conditions.  On the few occasions I did see deer tracks there were often blood stains on the snow where the sharp crust cut into their lower legs.  One place I saw these tracks was on the trail up to Red Hill on Wednesday, an absolutely spectacular blue-sky day.

Fire tower on Red Hill.

I didn't check the numbers, but the dew point that day must have been below zero for the sky to be that blue.  

One night we got a dusting of snow which was just enough for little mouse tracks to be seen on top of the crust.

Mouse tracks running from tree to tree.

Trees tend to make openings in the snow next to the trunk, either due to wind blowing around the tree or from sun warming the dark trunk, which provides easy access up and down through the snow cover for the mice.  As I mentioned last week, I have trouble differentiating between voles and mice, but I think these are mice tracks.  Not only are they running around above the snow (voles tend to tunnel underneath the snow) but they also show tail tracks - look closely at the tracks in the lower right - blown up here:

The tail drag mark is evident.

Voles can also leave tail tracks in snow but it's less common with the shorter tail they have.

Then on Friday we received a nice little snowfall of a few inches to put a good surface on top of the crust, but I didn't get out locally to see what was around, instead taking a trip over to Dorchester to ski on the nicely prepared trails at Green Woodlands.  

If  you're a cross country skier and have never been there, you should check it out - many miles of trails groomed for classic and skate, plus many other trails left for backcountry skiing.  And it's all at no cost.  Usually they have warming huts with fires and hot chocolate, but they're closed this year, although they do have one outdoor fire pit open with the fire burning, ready to cook up s'mores.  You can find out more at their website or facebook page.

Back on Lake Wicwas, during a ski along the west side of the lake, I came across this neat sight over the frozen water:

A Kingbird nest from warmer days.

It's the nest of an Eastern Kingbird, nicely being kept safe for next summer under a blanket of snow.  Evidently they have taken advantage of some human trash to reinforce their nest with strong fibers of blue plastic.  Animals will certainly make good use of whatever they can find.  I remember my grandmother putting out pieces of strings for birds to use in their nest building.

This kingbird nest raised a brood of four chicks in 2016 though I don't know if it's been used since then; kingbirds don't usually reuse a nest the way the phoebe, another flycatcher, does.  If the nest hasn't been rehabilitated since 2016 it certainly has held up well over the years.  Right now the kingbirds are enjoying winter in South America, somewhere along the Amazon River living off of fruit; they won't return to New Hampshire for quite a while yet, waiting until the insects they live off have emerged.  It's too bad the flycatchers will never get to experience that beautiful blue New Hampshire sky.