Wildlife Selfies

From the trail camera trap line there are velvet bucks, a coyote, a brood flock and a groundskeeper....

Pogonip Redoux

The other morning brought more spectacular frozen fog.  

A product of overnight fog and freezing temperatures this rime ice is sometimes referred-to as radiation fog, valley fog or freezing fog.  It is also called pogonip – a Shoshone word for cloud.    

Ordinarily, fog materializes when there is cooler air coming in contact-with a warmer body of water or moist surface like a swamp or wetland. 

Freezing fog materializes when the air temperature is below freezing and the water droplets in the fog become super-cooled. These super-cooled water droplets stay in liquid state until they drift into contact with a surface they can freeze-to. Grass, twigs, trees, leaves and so-forth. 

From our walk we were quick to capture some images before the sun broke thru and burn it all away.....

Return of the Pogonip

Following a random, unplanned day of sunshine on Tuesday, yesterday we woke to this.

Trees and grass ‘painted’ as if by Jack Frost himself.  

A product of overnight fog and freezing temperatures this rime ice is sometimes referred-to as radiation fog, valley fog or freezing fog.  It is also called pogonip – a Shoshone word for cloud.    

Ordinarily, fog materializes when there is cooler air coming in contact-with a warmer body of water or moist surface like a swamp or wetland. 

Freezing fog materializes when the air temperature is below freezing and the water droplets in the fog become super-cooled. These super-cooled water droplets stay in liquid state until they drift into contact with a surface they can freeze-to. Grass, twigs, trees, leaves and so-forth. 

 

 

It’s really a rather striking effect and pleasing to the eye. It is also something to be reckoned-with as it can result in ice build-up on roads – especially bridges – which have no ground insulation. It can also build-up on power lines with the result pf power outages. 

Drive carefully on mornings like this.

There will most surely be ice on the roads too..... 

 

Pogonip

The past week we’ve been waking to this……. 

Trees and grass ‘painted’ as if by Jack Frost himself.  It burns-off during the daylight hours and almost magically reappears from the overnight fogs. This winter meteorological event is a consequence of freezing fog.  Sometimes called radiation fog, valley fog or freezing fog it is also called pogonip – a Shoshone word for cloud. 

Fog materializes when there is cooler air coming in contact-with a warmer body of water or moist surface like a swamp or wetland. 

Freezing fog materializes when the air temperature is below freezing and the water droplets in the fog become super-cooled. These super-cooled water droplets stay in liquid state until they drift into contact with a surface they can freeze-to. Grass, twigs, trees, leaves and so-forth. 

It’s really a rather striking effect and pleasing to the eye. It is also something to be reckoned-with as it can result in ice build-up on roads – especially bridges – which have no ground insulation. It can also build-up on power lines with the result pf power outages. 

Drive carefully on mornings like this.

Or just stay-in and drink coffee. 

 

Me and the Girls

Great winter for snowshoeing so far.  Good exercise for the girls and good exercise for the people.

Never leave home without the pistolero and a pocket full of peanuts.

click to enlarge

Me and the Girls

click on the blonde Lab to enlarge

Not much escapes the patient vigil of a trail camera.  Are these dogs happy or what?

Me and My Girls

Just me and my girls.  Out fetching memory cards from the trail cameras...

click on image to enlarge

Circuit Walker

Making the circuit of the four trail cameras to make sure they're operating, the batteries are fresh and the SD cards are swapped-out on a routine basis.

It's about a mile walk.  Very nice in the winter.

The reason you will rarely see the girls (Girlfriend and Sister) in the picture is they're tearing it up on their own and only occasionally will get their image captured by the unwavering gaze of the trail cameras.  The blonde Lab is in the first photo (right)...

 click on images to enlarge

Swamp Gas

Lest you not believe in the existence of swamp gas - it does exist.

It has a tendency to accumulate at the sun sets and the air grows colder.  Warmer and moisture-laden air condenses and forms a fog.

Swamp gas...

 

Hoofing It.

20 degrees and sunny last Saturday.  Absolutely bracing. 

Took the girls out for a romp in the fresh snow to swap-out the SD cards on the trail cameras. 

In some places there was a foot of snow on the level. 

And the plow guy is constructing a couple of artificial Matterhorn-like mountains of snow with every visit.

The Proprietor

Sometimes even the proprietor deserves to be published.

Checking on a camera...

 

Hauling a spray tank of herbicide to defoliate a location for a food plot...

click on images to enlarge

Turkey Hunter

A shot of yours truly trudging out to a turkey blind.

 

Only to sit almost all day long and not see a single bird.

After I'd left for home guess who cruises through where my blind was located...

click on image images to enlarge

March 1 - March 2

Second trail camera location.  The cros roads.

The deer and turkey camp guys know this location.  Smack dab in the middle where two mowed trails intersect.

I located the camera on a tree just south of the crossroads facing west.  There was a well-traveled deer track there.

204 pictures taken over a period of 8 days...

click on images to enlarge

Busy Eight Days

Two cameras and 317 photos over a period of slightly less that eight days.

Absolutely unbelievable.

Sure I know that they're multiple shots of many of the same deer as well as me and the girls but when you figure the trail cameras are rigged to take only a three-photo burst before timing-out for awhile that's still a ton of pictures.

A weekend ago I moved this camera to a tree on the south side of Silver Creek - adjacent to an antique haybine partially buried in a rock pile.  There was a busy deer track in the snow so a figured what the heck.

Here is a collage of pictures taken over the past week.  Just a handful of the 113 shots uploaded from the SD card...

click on images to enlarge

One Camera

There's more than a foot of snow on the ground in places.  Snowshoes are the order of the day.

Just for kicks here's a sequential series of pictures taken with the same camera.  There were 120 total pictures taken over the course of 8 days.  

Here's a sample...

click on images to enlarge