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Show ' A- i.vv A ; s A Walking In The Winter jNTER MAY COME IN quietly or with nly a whisper of wind, or it may arrive with howl and bluster. Its earliest calling card may be a mere dust of snow on the foothills. Again it may roof the garage with thick white plash for quail to hail as they week food. Birds patronizing the food trays setter grain in their eagerness, pleasing junco6 that like to dine on the ground. Their claws make dainty designs on the snow and their banquet leavings draw mice to make even daintier tracks. Sparrows are not averse to pecking grain from snow; when a startled flock flies off they leave wing traces as graceful as those of any bird. A nature lover on a winter walk will find prints of wind and claw and hoof. If these are fresh, deducing whether squirrel or rab by Dixie E. Rose bit or deer has passed is not difficult If tracks are older and the weather has been clear, with sun bright enough to thaw trade edges, the makers will be hard to Identify. THE WALKER will leave his own tracks, of boots, or snow shoes, perhaps of skis or ski poles. An ardent but thoughtless photographer may leave a trail of film containers; let us hope not. Trees don't walk but their shadows move, long boled at sunrise and before sundown, even at noon If tlte sun has gone south. WTien winter walks in shady place, expedally along dark stream banks, his tracks can be smooth opaque ice, or ic that looks like crystal fluff. Watch your step in these slick footings, else you may find yuui'self congealing to an icicle in cold black water. Humans, top left, walking in the woods, leave tracks of anowshoes and ski poles, a Tweedy pattern in snow. Less formal, but patterned, nevertheless, are the marks f bird wings and claws and mice feet at upper right. And winter itself makes patterns where it walks os evidenced by frost flowers, creek ice on the bank, above. Stitching the snow on the roof of this Salt Lake house ore the troils of quail, visitors to many gardens, left. 17 |
