November 25th. A male Belted Kingfisher (Ceryle alcyon).  I'd seen it fly and heard it calling.  Finally found it, far away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Water is very high and flowing after rain and warm temps melted ice (and the trail surface).

 

November 27th.  More rain last night and more flooding on the trail.

 

November 29th.  At the barnyard just east of Cranberry Bog.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Canoodling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the rock cuts a bit further east.

 

Mica.

 

 

 

 

 

November 30th.  Beavers (Castor canadensis) dropped a tree across the trail last night.

 

Judging from the damp surface, they were still snipping off branches until shortly before I arrived.  They'd also been nibbling bark off the branches left behind.  (They eat bark, not wood.)  Branches will go into building their lodge or shoring up dams.

 

December 1st.  Predawn, cold and bleak.

 

 

 

Yesterday's beaver tree has all been hauled away except for this section of trunk.  Guessing that over the coming nights the beavers will snack on the bark as they work on other standing wood.

 

Pebbled surface on the ice from yesterday afternoon's snow squalls.  (For once, it's not the camera's digital noise.)

 

Dawn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Basal rosette of next year's Common Mullein (Verbascum thapsus).  Fuzzy leaves capture frost and keep it off more delicate leaf tissues below.

 

A fallen Catbriar (Smilax rotundifolia) leaf with frozen droplets of yesterday's snow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

December 3rd.  Forty-eight degrees and plenty of ground fog over the marsh.

 

 

 

Sun trying to break through to the east...

 

...made for some nifty reflections.