Snow!

 

It snowed! Click to enlarge.

 

The snow reminds me of this stanza from In the Bleak Midwinter by Christina Rossetti: 

 

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

 

Bleak indeed. No bugs or worms to eat, only dry berries.

Late January

I took a walk early this morning. Here's my report from outside -- it's cold (about 25F when I went out) but not windy, so tolerable for a well-bundled person. There's a lot of ice on the Delaware River. That's the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge. Click to enlarge.

Frosty!

A pair of swans navigated the unfrozen channels.

Geese flew overhead.

It was surprisingly noisy by the river. The ice was making a racket, cracking and popping, pushed around by the river's flow and starting to melt in the rising January sunshine. 

Snowdrops

 

Despite that it was just 10 stunningly cold degrees around here this morning, I went out looking for snowdrops -- and I found some! This little droopy patch was all, but I have no doubt that more of the scrappy little rhings will follow. Click to enlarge.

Not just any flower can pop up in mid-January. Snowdrops have special cold-weather adaptations. They produce proteins that act like biological antifreeze to keep their sap from freezing. They have strong leaf tips that let them push up through frozen soil and snow. And they usually reproduce asexually from bulbs dividing underground.                   No bees, no problem.

For me, snowdrops are an incentive for taking chilly walks in January. It's possible to come across a big patch of them, like in the picture above that I took a few years ago in Central Park in New York City. It might be just me but they always make me feel that although it is winter, the seasons are playing out according to plan and spring is not so far away.

More Daylight

I invite you to think back to the winter solstice on December 21, 2021, about two and a half weeks ago. On that day the sun set at 4:42 (in Philadelphia). Click to enlarge.

Now fast forward to today, January 9, 2022. The sun will set at 4:57. That's 15 more minutes of daylight! We are making steady progress through the winter.

Spring is waiting in the wings.

Creature Of The Year Awards, 2021!

 

Competition was stiff for the 2021 Urban Wildlife Guide Creature Of The Year Award. Congratulations to the winner, the Golden Northern Bumblebee! This handsome creature has appeared in the blog many times, and was featured in "My Favorite Bee" this year. Click on this sentence to revisit that blog post and see more photos of the Goden Northern Bumblebee. Take a bow you lovely fuzzy bee!

In the event that the bumblebee is unable to fulfill its duties as Creature Of The Year, the first runner-up, the amazing hummingbird clearwing moth will step in. Congratulations you stunning, mothy, master-of-disguise! Click the photos to enlarge them.