Well, I was out sliding around on the ice again this week. I made two trips up to the tiny reservoir north of Aurora to search for photo compositions on its frozen surface. I was not disappointed.
Some recent windy days had blown seeds of both dogbane and milkweed on to the ice, where they’d ended up perched on their comae (their fluffy parts). Wasn’t that fortuitous! They look really pretty when they do that.
Common milkweed seed (Asclepias syriaca).
Both times I visited, there was a small duck hanging out on the ice. I approached carefully and it seemed amenable to being photographed. I’m pretty sure it was my soft, comforting voice and non-threatening hat.
Ice duck (Anas carolinensis var. polyethylene).The same ice duck (I assume) a couple days later.
It was good to see I wasn’t the only lunatic walking around on the ice. Several raccoons had also been around, based on the numerous tracks I found.
Raccoon track in a skiff of snow.A raccoon that didn’t wipe its feet.Frosty smartweed (Polygonum sp.)Ice on the tip of a grass leaf dangling near the ice’s surface.Frost at the entrance of a tunnel made of an elm leaf on the ice.A frosty grass stem.
The highlight of my two trips, of course, were the ice bubbles. Most of the ice looked like frosted glass and wasn’t transparent enough to show the ice bubbles that were surely trapped within it. Around the base of some plants, though, it looked like the ice had melted and refrozen, and that’s where the bubbles were. The rest of the photos here are just a few examples of the many, many bubbles I enjoyed photographing. I find them mesmerizing to stare at – like little galaxies of bubbles.
We’re in the middle of a big cold snap as I write this. I’m hopeful that I’ll get some more chances to photograph ice bubbles, seed comae, frost, and other winter wonders soon. Stay tuned!
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.
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!
The Prairie Ecologist 