Not a deer trail but a super highway

Rush hour on my bush trail that I keep clear of snow.

It will be interesting to see how wildlife populations on our property react this spring and summer to what so far has been a near-total absence of canine predators. This has been the first winter in probably 15 years that timber wolves haven't scoured our land each night in search of whitetail deer.
By this time we normally have a half-dozen deer kills right near my walking trails. This year there hasn't been a track of the big predators.
Nor has their been any sign of red foxes. They typically whip around the property every few days and have proven remarkably adept at catching ruffed grouse while they slept beneath the snow. In fact one time I saw evidence of where a fox went after a group of five partridge that were hanging around the house. The fox got a bird each night for five consecutive nights. In an intriguing display of animal behaviour, it left half of the last partridge near our front step, seemingly as a present to our black Lab, Bud. The fox then left and I didn't see a sign of it for weeks. Bud, of course, accepted the gift.
The coyote photographed a few posting back isn't a regular visitor. I would say he swings through about once a week. He seems most interested in mice.
Someone must have shown my post about the absence of some animals this winter to the red squirrels because the very next day a couple showed up for the first time at the bird feeders. There suddenly are lots of tracks from them around the trails too. I suspect they had put away a ton of green balsam and spruce cones last summer and have been munching on them rather than ones still on the trees. Apparently the store has now run empty.

Deer are really thin now. They have been losing weight every day since last summer.

Feb. 22 in Nolalu, Ont. +10C (50F)

There is still lots of snow but the temperature is WAY above freezing

10C outside, 28 C inside

My goodness! The temperature shot up to 10 C or 50 F today. Just a few nights ago it was -28 C.
The snow is sliding off the metal roofs.
I'm breaking out the BBQ.

Snow has slid off our old root cellar

Friendly neighbourhood coyote visits

It was a beautiful sunny day today, although a bit cold, and it brought out a lovely coyote who walked right across the middle of the field in front of our house.
The snow has compacted now and that toughens it enough to let animals like the coyote stay relatively afloat. The total depth of snow is over 30 inches.

See conditions on entire Earth right now

Visible Earth

Temperature

NASA has a great website and app that lets you see climatic conditions on the entire planet at once. Called NASA Earth Now, it tells you either current or the latest readings for things like cloud cover, temperature, carbon dioxide, soil moisture, gravity and much more.
I have downloaded their app to my smartphone and it works wonderfully.
It is great to see the big picture, not just get snippets of weather and climate information. You can rotate the globe to see any place on Earth. You can also see the orbits of NASA satellites.
I have made screenshots of just a couple of the views here.

Some birds and creatures are AWOL

Here at our home in Nolalu we are blessed to have a bunch of friendly birds and animals to cheer us up through the winter. The four deer in the video visit our bird feeders every couple of hours. We also have several ruffed grouse or partridge that feed on the birch catkins right outside the windows. Then there are all the songbirds: bluejays, Canada jays, hairy woodpeckers, downy woodpeckers, goldfinches, chickadees, juncos, and pine siskins. Although not at the feeders I have also seen redbreasted nuthatches and white-winged crossbills.
But there are some birds and creatures missing this year. No one has seen a pine grosbeak in the entire region. The Christmas Bird Count for all the towns in the Northwest didn't record a single bird. There were a few found east of Lake Superior. There aren't any evening grosbeaks being seen either but that is not as unusual as they are known as an irruptive species. Pine grosbeaks, however, are dependable winter birds at feeders and their total absence is a mystery.
When it comes to creatures, I have not seen a sign of a wolf or a fox on our land in Nolalu. Last year the only fox we saw were grey foxes, a new species here. I have a couple of trailcam photos of a coyote this winter. Only a few miles east of here coyotes are known to run in packs but here at our home, which is in a more-forested area, all coyotes seen are singles.
Something also seems to have happened to red squirrels. There are none at the feeder where in the past we could have 14 at a time. I have seen a few squirrel tracks but, incredibly, I have only seen a single animal.
Is all of this somehow due to the big seed crop produced by trees last summer? I don't know but it is the only explanation I can think of. Red squirrels' primary food source are conifer seeds. Trees last summer were so heavy with cones that their tops were bent over.

Is this a cool puzzle or what?

Brenda is a puzzler and just did this great puzzle given to us by South Carolina friends Howard and Millie. I love this artist, Mark Fredrickson. This one is going to have to go up to the cabin!

Will frozen ground melt beneath the snow?

Except for right near the surface, the ground and rock in this region stay the same temperature the year-around. It is about 45 F or 7 C. It is like this for thousands of feet. That is similar to the temperature in your fridge. The approved method of thawing frozen meat from your freezer is to place it in the fridge. It will be thawed in less than a day.
A heavy blanket of snow, such as we have here in the Nolalu area, southwest of Thunder Bay, makes good insulation. It is well known that snow can prevent the ground from freezing if the snow comes early in the winter. Even if it comes later it stops the frostline from going any deeper. I don't think anybody would dispute this.
However, once the snow has fallen and is insulating the ground from more freezing, my question is does the ground start thawing from the bottom-up? It should be the same as thawing meat in the fridge.
Our ground was frozen probably a foot or more before the heavy snows started coming in January. Now we have at least 30 inches and more is sure to follow. When April comes around and the snow melts, will there be unfrozen ground beneath?
I have another question, why is the ground so cold to begin with? The outer core of the Earth is 5430 C or 9806 F. I would expect the ground, and rock beneath, to get warmer every inch that you go deeper, at least once you get away from the top 10 feet or so that is influenced by surface temperatures. Yet, in the gold mines at Red Lake miners had to wear wool long underwear when they were underground to about 5,000 feet deep. When the Goldcorp mine went 5,000 feet deeper the conditions were hot. I get it why it would be hot 10,000 feet deep. I just don't understand why it wasn't also somewhat hot at 5,000 feet.
Despite my research on the Internet I can't find a clear answer to this question. Anyone know?
I have a theory. I think the Earth and rock might still be cold from the last ice age.
Here's another quandary to ponder, this from my old Bow Narrows blog. What is a shadow?

We have turned the corner on winter

This winter has been easy on the woodpile and wildlife

Everyone is realizing that the deepest part of winter is behind us and we have only had a few days and nights of bitter cold. December, January and February are the months that we can experience -40 C cold, with or without the windchill. There is only February left now and here in Nolalu I think we have only had a couple of nights in the -30s. Incredibly, January saw nightime temperatures in the single negatives and daytime highs just below freezing.
The forecast for the next two weeks shows cooler weather but still remarkably warm for this time of year.
On the downside, it has been cloudy most of the time. That has been hard on those folks relying on solar. We have friends who live off the grid and they report using their generator to charge their batteries a record number of times.
Incidentally, they also have exciting animal news. They have seen wolverine tracks near their home which is in a lightly-inhabited area southwest of Thunder Bay, almost on the Minnesota border.
That is the farthest south I have heard of a wolverine in Northwestern Ontario. These largest members of the weasel family are making a comeback in the province, starting in the area around and north of Red Lake. They cover immense territories. I wouldn't be surprised to next hear the same animal has been spotted half-way to Duluth, Minn.

🎶 Macho, macho man, I wanna be...🎶

"Rugged individualism, derived from 'individualism', is a term that indicates the ideal whereby an individual is totally self-reliant and independent from outside, usually state or government assistance." -- Wikipedia.
So you're a big, tough guy, right? You don't need no stinkin' help from anybody, do you? You pulled yourself up by your bootstraps, went to the School of Hard Knocks, forged your identity, blazed your own trail. You are one self-made, righteous dude!
That is the image many North Americans see when they look in the mirror. And it's an utter fairy tale.
Those of us driving big honkin' pickup trucks, racing fast cars and scorching the pavement on choppers and hawgs can get no farther on our own than our umbilical cord to Mama Oil will allow.
We are babies nursing at the gas teat.
Do you really want to be on your own? Then cut mommy's apron strings and get yourself an electric vehicle. Get your own solar system. Make your own power.  I repeat: YOUR OWN power.
Suck it up, Buttercup. It's time to be a man.