Stopping by Snowy Woods

 Saturday afternoon, our daytime temps warmed enough so that I went for walk in Oliver's Woods. I walked in via the NW Pond. The sharp repeated one note call of a flicker punctuated the quiet. I watched as the bird worked its way down the trunk of small dead green ash by the edge of the pond. I wondered again how they could find enough food to sustain themselves on cold winter days.

On the trails, the ground was soft, for the first time in months. Enough snow had melted and seeped into the upper inches to re-hydrate the humus. A herd of 5 white-tailed deer danced away from me twice as I wandered through the refuge. Wildlife thoroughfares, hidden highways known and regularly used by the denizens of the Woods were revealed in the snow. Tracks of opossum, raccoons, deer, armadillo, and others (skunks?) Interesting to see where they followed regular human trails and where they diverged and went their own way to their well-known destinations, I've never visited.

 The small stream was running too deep to cross with my hiking boots.

The trunks of fallen cottonwood giants, southern hackberries, pecans and elms were topped with white crests of snow on top of the horizontal trunks wet with melting snow.

  Surrounded by snow, dark melt water pools, the size of two or three bathtubs, some inches deep, were filling. They will be used by frogs, salamanders and various aquatic insects in the next few weeks.

  On the way out of the Woods passing the NW Pond again, the call of a barred owl off to the east left me wondering if the snow made its hunt more difficult or easier.