Roaring Wind, Silent Heron

Woke on a pleasant 48 F degree Sunday morning in late November. That was the high temperature. The wind was coming.
At 2:30 and 28F I stopped by the Northwest entrance of the Woods for a walk to see what was happening.
The wind was roaring.
I quickly walked down the slope into the lee of the northern slope and entered the relative calm under the trees. The winds were roaring overhead now and I wondered if trees would come down. I came to the NW pond and there stood the tallest great blue heron I think I've ever seen. It stood silently on the far side of the small pond. It colors were great camouflage with the gray and brown stems behind it. It tracked me as I walked past the pond, slowly turning its head. I did not linger or disturb it further.

Walking past the big tilted Carpenter cottonwood, I was glad it had shed its leaves and was standing bare, with less surface area for the wind to tug. Approaching the East Pond there was a burst of life as three white-tailed deer stood and bolted away from the SE side. They disturbed a large barred owl that flew silently from my NW side of the pond.
The Woods are largely bare now except for the incongruous green of the invasive Euonymus heart's a bustin' shrub with its red berries, on the SW shore of the East Pond and south next to the second largest cottonwood #200.
On the south side of the main East West Trail, east of Fence Corner the red elms in the under story have flushed new green leaves, a few weeks old. The under story there looks a bit like April. Odd..

Just south of East Pond, and again west of Elm Bridge, small passerines, wrens and other species were disturbed, flying rapidly around, scolding and chasing each other. I couldn't see a predator. I wondered if they are stressed and hustling to ready themselves for the sudden change in the weather.

The water depth in the NW Pond was 2.49 feet and in the East Pond 2.15 feet. There was still water in the Eastern Wash, and all the way to the Elm Bridge, but it was not flowing, dry from the Elm Bridge southward. Dry at Island Crossing. The NW Pond is covered in a light chocolate mouse brown of old pollen, now shoved up in a wrinkled skin to the eastern shore.