We got snow!
It’s been a really dry winter, but we finally picked up a few inches of snow (3-5 across the areas I’ve visited this week). I had to miss a conference I’d been looking forward to, but we really needed the moisture. The bitterly cold temperatures have made the snow a little less fun for most people, but I’ve bundled up a few times and have had some really pleasant hikes.
Those low temperatures seem to be tamping down the activity of many smaller creatures I hoped to see tracks of. I’ve only seen a few sets of mouse tracks and those didn’t look like they went very far. In most cases, my amateur tracking told me that the mice popped their heads out of the snow, hopped a few feet and then quickly dove back down into the snow to wait for better days. Perfectly sensible.
Since there weren’t many tracks to follow around, I spent a lot of time looking for interesting patterns and textures to photograph. I found plenty to look at in Lincoln Creek Prairie right here in Aurora.
Yesterday afternoon, I was at the Platte River Prairies to meet with our Hubbard Fellows. Afterward, I wandered through the snow out there, enjoying the late day sunshine and low wind speeds. I found a few tracks of mice, along with deer, rabbits and coyotes, but most of the tracks were from songbirds. I’m certainly not good enough to tell you what bird species they were, but I’m guessing meadowlark, tree sparrow, or horned larks are all good possibilities. No birds popped up in front of me to give me clues.
Whenever it snows a few inches (less than 6 or 8), I tend to look for prairies that were grazed or mowed the previous year. That gets me out of dense vegetation and into broad areas with scattered plants sticking up above the snow. Especially when the sun is out, that limits the number of shadows I have to deal with and makes it easier to isolate individual plants, shadows, or textures.
It appears we’ll get to keep this snow around for a while and might even get a little more early next week. One great thing about snow is that it completely transforms what sites look like, so even places I’ve hiked frequently this winter are suddenly completely different and even more interesting to explore. If you’re lucky enough to have snow on the ground where you’re at, I hope you’re getting some enjoyment out of it.
The Prairie Ecologist 