Snow Days

A school "snow day" doesn't mean anything to us any more, we still enjoy the winter wonderland while it lasts. We had about 4 1/2 inches of snow from Saturday night through Sunday night. Now that it's a sunny Tuesday, the snow is melting fast.

Yesterday (Monday): Our solar panels don't make much electricity when they're covered with snow. (Actually, they haven't even "turned on" for 2 days.) As the snow/ice slips off, it's amazing how it coheres in one piece.

The view from behind the panels.

This morning, the sheet of snow/ice had slipped further yet. We didn't expect it to last overnight.

The bottom edge is deteriorating quickly. About two hours later, the whole sheet slid off the panels. Unfortunately, we didn't see it happen.

Our landscape-eating rabbits were hard at work overnight.

With the trees covered in rime from a cold fog overnight, and sunlight in just the right spot, made Fore Mountain look like an old volcano.

North Carolina Chinese Lantern Festival

Yesterday, after dinner with friends, we visited the North Carolina Chinese Lantern Festival at the Koka Booth Amphitheatre in Cary. A cold rain fell all afternoon, but by 7 PM, the rain had stopped, although the ground was saturated and there were puddles everywhere. But that meant that hardly anyone went out last night, and it was easy to view the lantern exhibits.

This lantern exhibit leads to the stage where the evening performance of traditional Chinese dance and acrobatics ended a few minutes after we arrived.

The fish display is one of the first on the path.

Lotus flowers.

Swans reflected in the lake.

The dragon is also along the edge of the lake and is actually better viewed from the road on the other side of the lake.

A close-up of the dragon's head.

We thought the Panda Tree was the best lantern exhibit. The flowers changed colors: green to blue to red, then back to green.

A closer look at the pandas.

We enjoyed our visit, but are unlikely to return next year. If you are looking for a fabulous winter light show, we both thought the Illumination at the Morton Arboretum near Chicago was more impressive and takes much longer to see (about 2 hours rather than 30 minutes). And someday we'll get see one of the Ice Castles exhibits.

A quick note on the photos. I used the "Hand-Held Night" scene setting on my small Canon SX720 HS camera with a 1-stop underexposure. Other than some cropping, the photos are "as is". My Canon EOS Rebel T4i DSLR has the same setting, and while it has better optics, the SX720 is so much easier to just slip into a pocket that I use it almost exclusively. I call "Hand-Held Night" the "Magic Camera" setting.

More Wildlife

Our trail cams have been busy catching interesting nocturnal visitors.

We have some of the best-fed rabbits around -- they love any landscaping I provide. (Although this year I found out that basil is not a preferred food -- I hope to use it this year to protect my asparagus.)

Raccoons are also regular visitors.

Deer are common, but this is the only time we've seen three in the photo at one time.

Foxes come by regularly, but they are usually moving too fast to get a good picture.

If only this one had stepped just a bit further into the frame! (He did, but was going too fast to get a good photo.)

Coyotes are seen (and heard) almost every night. They know how to pose for the camera.

A pair of coyotes in snow.

A bear ambles through the woods about once a month. Usually attracted to our neighbor's garbage which is about 100 yards behind the camera. (We have bear-resistant trash cans, which have never been opened, but have been scratched by claws and pierced by teeth.)

It's not all wildlife. One of the cameras isn't functioning as it should be, so we had it set to take a picture every 10 minutes. On several nights it caught Venus rising in the east.

Owl Boxes and More

We never got around to mounting the owl box we got last Christmas (thanks, Josh!), and for Christmas this year we got a second owl box (thanks, Pat!). So with our two sons visiting between Christmas and New Year's, it was time to get them mounted.

One of the most difficult things was to find suitable trees. An owl box should face east, to be sheltered from the prevailing winds, and have some branches for owlets to grip as they fledge (learn to fly). It's also a challenge to get these rather large structures 20 feet off the ground.

The first owl house is sized for a small owl, such as a screech owl. We occasionally hear screech owls, and far more rarely saw-whet owls, so we hope someone will call this box home this spring.

We placed it about 15 feet up in a small-ish white oak.

The second owl box is significantly bigger and is sized for barn owls (or barred owls or great horned owls). We hear barred owls frequently, and also an occasional great horned owl. Again, we hope for residents this spring. Plans for this owl box can be found on the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society's web site.

This box is located about 20 feet high in a large white pine along a sheltered creek.

It wasn't all owls. Here are two more pictures from the week.

Lon moved some firewood off the concrete slab below our deck. It was filled with thousands of Asian multicolored lady beetles looking for winter shelter.

Amos and Maria investigate a low-lying small bird nest.