Submitted by Nathan Bolls

Today (Sat, 16 Jan), from 2-3:30 p.m., I hiked the Bayer Pond and woods and the woods east of the KSU pond. Because of the balmy weather (41 degrees, sunny, and clam) I expected the edges of the pond ice sheets to be melted. But saw only two sorts of activity: one incident of waves indicating a fish was working near the shore in the SW neck of Bayer pond and, in a couple of places, submerged pond-edge leaves under the ice were waving gently. This surely was caused by movements of fish, nearby, but unseen. I was looking at Bayer Pond as a brick, and this is the sort of thing that looking at the pores of the brick can give you. But not tomorrow.

I was preoccupied with both tomorrow (predicted high of 12 degrees) and the opening lines of Christina Rossetti’s famous poem/song:

 In the bleak midwinter,

frosty winds made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron,

water like a stone; 

 Rossetti (1830-94) refers later in this poem to heavy snows “long ago,” which means she probably was thinking of Europe’s mini-ice age of a few centuries prior. Recall the winter scenes painted by the two Brueghels depicting that time.

Chickadees and juncos, seemingly cheerfully, were using the feeder in the woods west of Bayer Dam, and, randomly, I watched robins, cardinals, and one blue jay. Saw no sign of the covey of quail often observed around the feeders found in the woods or on the dam. However, my score was not so bad since, at the same time, a young father was taking his two talkative young sons on a long walk through our Natural Area. Their questions were refreshing. That father and his sons will not be statistics of the sort used by Rich Louv in his disturbing book entitled Last Child in the Woods.

But tomorrow I will be reading comfortably in my recliner, and just maybe at least that blue jay will wish it had paid a bit more attention to the field manual on ornithological winter protocol to be followed by members of its species.