Tag Archives: ice

Photos of the Week – February 5, 2026

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I’m very grateful to have been featured in a short (6 1/2 minutes) video on Nebraska Public Media’s Nebraska Stories. A terrific film crew spent two days with me at the Niobrara Valley Preserve and the final product came out really beautifully. I hope you enjoy it. (If you’re reading this in an email, either click on the title of the post to make the video active or just click on this link.) Huge thanks to Kelly Rush, Tiffany Johanson, and Emily Kreutz with Nebraska Public Media.

In other news, I did my best to take advantage of the brief spell of frigid temperatures we had recently. It’s over now, though, and I went to the grocery store in a t-shirt today. That’s not winter! Where’s the snow, ice, and ice? It has all melted away.

I had two great mornings in late January, though, with some gorgeous frost and ice. The first was at my ol’ dependable restored wetland and the second was out on the frozen surface of the Platte River. I’ve been waiting all winter for the temperatures to stay cold long enough to make some solid ice for me to walk out on. Right before the cold spell ended, I finally got that chance.

There are a lot of photos below, but if you make it to the end of this irresponsibly long post, there is a fun little surprise at the end.

Here are the photos from the frosty wetland.

There was a little open water coming across one of the many beaver dams at the wetland. I spent some time with an icy branch sticking out over the water.

Now, here are the photos from the river. It was well below zero (F) on this morning and I almost stayed home because it looked like it might be too cloudy. As it happened, I had about 10 minutes of light while the sun rose up through the thin band of open space between the horizon and the clouds. I scrambled around as much as I could during that short window.

Once the sun went behind the clouds, I wandered around for maybe 45 minutes without taking any photos – just enjoying the day. Eventually, the sun rose high enough and gained enough intensity that I had enough light (barely) to work with. It was still pretty dark, but that’s just mood lighting, right?

Ok, here’s the fun part I promised. At least, I hope you think it’s fun. I found a couple interesting patterns in the ice and thought I’d check to see if you see what I see.

Mini Quiz Question #1: In the photo above, look at the creature in the center of the image with its head on the left side of its body. See it? Ok. What direction is that creature looking?

A. It’s clearly looking to the right. Is it Woodstock from the Peanuts cartoons?

B. It’s looking to the left. Also, I’m pretty sure it’s a larval salamander of some kind.

C. Are you talking about an actual creature or just something your imagination sees in the ice?

D. It can be whatever you think. Also, it might be Woodstock even if it’s looking to the left?

E. Someone made a cartoon about peanuts??

Mini Quiz Question #2: How angry is the bird in the photo above?

A. So angry. Wow. I wouldn’t want to meet that bird in a dark alley.

B. You’re talking about the bird looking to the left with the slanty eye? It does look pretty mad, but sometimes it’s hard to know. It might just be discussing a serious topic.

C. Again, do you really see a bird? I just see ice.

D. That’s no bird. The proportions are all wrong. Well, maybe a cartoon bird, I guess.

E. There’s no bird in that photo. That’s clearly a ___________. (Feel free to tell me what it is in the comments.)

Photos of the Week – December 15, 2025

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First, a quick announcement that we are again offering up to five $1,500 grants to graduate students working on research related to conservation in the Great Plains. Read more about the Weaver Grant program here.

Yesterday, I headed out to watch the sunrise over my favorite frozen wetland at the Platte River Prairies. It was a beautiful, calm morning with temperatures in the low single digits (Fahrenheit). A short-eared owl flew near, patrolling the banks, a mouse of some kind hopped away from my feet (not when the owl was near), and small flocks of Canada geese periodically passed overhead.

Hoar frost on ice.

I was at the wetland to take advantage of a couple days’ worth of cold temperatures that I’d hoped had frozen the water enough to let me wander around on it with my camera. Temperatures this week are supposed to be well above freezing, so I knew I had a short window for ice and frost photography. The ice was just thick enough to hold my weight, but thin enough to make ominous sounds beneath me. I mainly crawled or slid on my belly to make sure I didn’t fall through. (The water beneath me was only about a foot deep, but still.)

The sun was just hitting the top of the “eagle tree” when I took this photo.
Here’s a closer view of the hoar frost on the “clear-ish” portion of the ice.
Here are the tracks I made by army crawling across the ice to get the above two photos.
Hoar frost made fuzzy leggings on these rushes.

As the sunlight reached the vegetation near the north edge of the wetland, I spent a little time photographing frosty plants. One particular scene caught my eye and reminded me of something I’m worried most of you won’t recognize. Have you ever seen little puppets with articulated legs and arms that dangle from the end of a stick? You can make them dance and move around by bouncing the stick or bouncing the surface beneath the puppet? I’m not talking about marionettes – they have multiple long strings. These are either directly attached to the end of a stick or attached by a single short chain or something.

Well, anyway, they exist and I thought the frosty flower of a bent rush looked kind of like one.

“Frosty puppet dancer”.
“Frosty puppet dancer” alternate version.

As I walked/slid around the wetland, I gravitated toward places where the ice was darker and covered with scattered hoar frost. The little patches of frost reminded me of herds of bison or wildebeests moving across the plains. I enjoyed photographing them both individually and in groups.

I was really hoping for a bunch of ice bubbles, but didn’t find many. There were only a few patches, here and there. Between a light snowfall and the hoar frost, there wasn’t as much clear ice as I’d hoped. I still managed to scratch my itch a little.

Do these ice bubbles look like paramecia to anyone else?

Here are more examples of what I photographed yesterday. I managed to stay on top of the ice all morning. My gloves and sleeves got a little wet toward the end, but only because I was trying to work near the edge of some open water and there was a little sloshing. Thanks for your concern.

This will be a warmer week, but I hope for colder temperatures soon. It is winter, after all. If we can’t have wildflowers and insects, we should at least get frost, snow, and ice!