This morning, I woke up to a Riding Mountain world that was magically transformed. The aspen trees were thick with hoarfrost, almost like “winter leaves”. Instead of being able to see through the forest at this time of the year, we were looking at a magical forest of snow crystals. A combination of weather conditions (In an earlier post, I explained the origin of hoarfrost).
There are several online sources that offer an explanation of Hoar Frost (or radiation frost). Hoarfrost refers to white ice crystals, loosely deposited on exposed objects or the ground, that form on cold, clear nights when heat losses (infrared radiation) into the open skies cause objects to cool to a temperature which is colder than the dewpoint of the air next to the surface. Frost is frozen water that has condensed from some of the water vapour contained in the air.
The birds at the feeder, the trees themselves and the entire landscape was transformed. I am going snowshoeing today into this forest of hoarfrost. It’s kind of like a real-world pocket of some part of Lord of The Rings.
I love being in the right place at the right time when it comes to photographing natural phenomena, including wildlife. This image of a black-bear cub emerging in spring to eat aspen budes is one of my favorite images of all time that I took in Riding Mountain National Park. It illustrates how amazingly honed black bears are to their food supply. Wherever the right food source is available, they will find it. Blue sky, white aspens, black bear. A photographer’s dream.
Then today, I received a link to a whimsically produced YouTube video of a bear scratching itself on a tree. The video image was terrific because we become witness to the ordinary behaviour of a grizzly bear ( I believe that it was a grizzly bear given that it was identified as the Northern Divide Bear Project). If you can turn down the music and just watch the bear scratching, it is quite remarkable.
What I am realizing is that today’s technology – remote or motion sensing and digital video – enables us to see things in the woods that we would not normally be privileged to see. This helps us to communicate the remarkable bio-diversity of life here in Manitoba and elsewhere on our planet.
The birds at the feeder, the trees themselves and the entire landscape was transformed. I am going snowshoeing today into this forest of hoarfrost. It’s kind of like a real-world pocket of some part of Lord of The Rings.
