urbpan | Lost Pond Reservation in the snow

Yup, it was snowy out there. It was easy to take a lot of pictures. I edited myself down a bit, but there are still probably too many, too much the same. We did make a fun animal discovery, so click to continue if you love collembolans.

I'll spare you the 30 or so pictures I took like this. Suffice it to say, being in the freshly snow-covered forest was magical.

This begins a series I call "what various plants look like with snow on them."
The helical vines are mature oriental bittersweet.

The fruit of multiflora rose.

The fruit of sweet pepperbush. You can see it in flower here.

And finally, the fruit of oriental bittesweet.

As we neared the pond, the clear swampy water full of fallen leaves caught my attention.

The pond itself has its own winter beauty.

Charlie thought about swimming, but decided against it.

In two places we came across patches of snow sprinkled with thousands upon thousands of tiny animals. I recognized these as "snow fleas," a kind of springtail that appears in great numbers on the snow. According to the wikipedia article, it's not clear what they are doing on there, although they might be eating algae. I wrote about another kind of springtail here.