Birds and ice

The Fendig Gallery at the Carnegie Center has "Through the Lens Naturally" on display until February 3 (and perhaps a few days beyond). It is a display of photographs taken by Barb Lucas, our local bird expert. She has some wonderful pictures and not all are of birds. She has a series, for example, of a monarch butterfly going through metamorphosis, from caterpillar to butterfly. These monarch pictures are in one of two little cubicles that have video screens (one of which is on the left in the picture below).

 The reception for the exhibit will be next Sunday.

Our frigid weather will be leaving us this week as warmer air comes in. Below is a picture of the river taken Sunday from the Washington Street bridge looking upstream. You can see little ice islands in the water.

 As they passed under they bridge they hit the part of river that had frozen over. Because they were very thin, the little ice sheets would crumble as they hit the ice and then would be sucked under the ice. Some of the ice might get tossed up onto the ice and that is the source of the white areas.

On Saturday the river was frozen over from the Talbert bridge to the midpoint of Iroquois Park. The cold extended that ice several hundred feet further upstream in just a day. I suspect all the ice will be gone by the end of the week.

(The picture below is the view on Sunday from the Washington Street Bridge looking downstream. You can see the edge of the ice, though the shadow of the bridge obscures it.)

The Rensselaer Adventure Facebook page, which is used to draw viewers to the blog posts, has finally reached 1500 likes.

Congratulations are in order for our Jasper County Fair Queen. (And here.)