Recent temperature swings, including many freezes and thaws, have created some interesting patterns on the frozen surfaces of wetlands and ponds. Early this week, I took advantage of the latest cold temperatures to wander out on the pond/wetland at our family prairie. There was only minor cracking beneath my feet as I carefully stepped and slid across the (mostly) frozen surface. I stayed near the edges where I knew the water below me was only a foot or so deep and tried to distribute my weight as evenly as I could. That’s all completely normal behavior, right?
I spent about an hour on that ice, much of it waiting for the brief periods when the sun popped out from behind the thin clouds moving across the southern sky. I only stepped through the ice once, and that was when I decided to confirm my suspicion that the ice along the northern shore was probably thinner because of its increased exposure to the sun. Hooray for science… My waterproof boots were more than sufficient to keep me dry.
Below are some more photos from my morning jaunt.
The Prairie Ecologist 
I especially like the photos showing stubble poking through the ice (the one with the ice ‘cap’ is my favorite), but I’m struck by how much the pancake ice shapes resemble certain fruiting lichens.
Thank you again for sharing the great photos of this beautiful part of our world!!
Beautiful would make a great collage. Thank you.
Thanks for the great pictures!
Prairie art photography at its best. Stunning, thanks for sharing.
Please add gknight@fnai.fsu.edu to your mailing list. Thanks!
I can’t actually add people myself. They’ll have to enter their email address into the ‘subscribe’ space on the home page of the blog.
Thank you, Beautiful.