December 31, 2016 - New Year's Eve.

"For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne.

We'll tak a cup o'kindness yet,

For auld lang syne."

 

Robert Burns  1788

 

 

We'll take a cup of kindness for good friends Dick, Kenny, and now Tom.

December 30, 2016 - Drake Mallard on Big Goose Creek.

December 29, 2016 - A bald eagle and two young mule deer.  The eagles are big birds.

December 28, 2016 - Wyoming Wind.  There is a very strange and very rare phenomena that can occur in Wyoming in the winter.  I have only seen it two or three times in nearly 40 years.  It happened again yesterday.  The wind blew so hard that it blew snow laying flat on the ground into snowballs.  They advance at an imperceptible rate.  Here are three photographs; the first, showing the snowballs on flat ground.  The second shows the snowballs being blown almost perpendicular to the fall line of a hill.  And the third photograph, look closely, shows the snowballs actually being blown UP the hill.  I wish I knew what the experts called this happenstance.  It is very interesting and fun.  I estimate the wind was blowing 50-60 miles per hour here along the face of the mountain.

 

December 27, 2016 - After the storm.

December 26, 2016 - Yesterday's (Christmas) weather was 5-10F, sustained 30-40mph winds, wind chills from -15F to -20F, with visibility limited to 100 yards.  The Christmas blizzard lasted from yesterday morning until after midnight.  Luckily we only had about 6" of snow.  Today is almost tropical: sunny, 20F, calm.

December 25, 2016 - Merry Christmas!

Grey-crowned Rosy Finches.

December 24, 2016 - Christmas Eve in Wyoming.

December 23, 2016 - The Three Wise Men.

December 22, 2016 - Silver Bells.

December 21, 2016 - A Northern Christmas.

December 20, 2016 - A grey sky...but Christmas is soon.

December 19, 2016 - Sunrise out back this morning; interesting clouds.

December 18, 2016 - Twenty-eight degrees below zero (-28F).

 

December 17, 2016 - Blizzard conditions, -1F with -18F wind chills.

 

 

December 16, 2016 - I went up the mountain yesterday to get a Christmas tree before the big storm we are expecting.  The possibilities were endless, each tree more perfect than the last.  I finally found one just the right shape and size; but it was spoken for.

 

December 15, 2016 - Some of the nice whitetail bucks down at Beckton last month during the rut.

 

 

 

 

December 14, 2016 - Today would have been my father's 91st birthday; father and grandfather.

December 13, 2016 - Antlers behind the red osier.

December 12, 2016 - A Redtail Hawk in an old heron nest along Little Goose Creek on a grey day.

December 11, 2016 - Early morning sun from the dining room window.

December 10, 2016 - Three days of sub-zero temperatures entirely froze over the creek.  The coldest it got was -15F one night.

December 9, 2016 - A whitetail portrait.  The fawns are about six months old now.

December 8, 2016 - A white-breasted nuthatch at the feeder.

December 7, 2016 -

75 years ago today, December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was bombed.

A couple of years later my father was there in the Navy.

He was 19 years old.

 



December 6, 2016 - Remembering October colors after a few grey December days.