Last week's plunging temperatures where daytime highs struggled to get above minus-16-degrees Celsius, engineered the freezing-over of the creek down in the ravine. But it seems the ice hadn't penetrated all that deeply. By yesterday, under the influence of succeeding days of almost tropical warmth when day-time highs reached zero-C., the creek ice had melted and water was running freely again. It takes moving water longer to freeze, obviously, than standing water, and the trend reversed itself.

And so, one supposes it wasn't all that surprising to see flocks of over-wintering robins flitting about by the creek. In the winter months, those robins that decide not to migrate south tend to gather in clusters. And we're informed by local ornithologists that there is ample in the way of food for them all. They tend to alter their feeding patterns from searching out live meals like earthworms to foraging about in apple trees, or looking for bittersweet berries or Hawthorne haws to feast on. Still, it's sad to see formerly migrating birds remain behind to tough out the bitter winter cold and high winds and icy pellets we tend to encounter.

Speaking of encountering, we did on our ravine ramble yesterday, see quite a few people out and about in the forest, walking the trails with their dogs. So Jackie and Jillie had the opportunity to roust about with other dogs, enlivening the quality of their walk.

We noticed that a mature poplar had at some time broken halfway up its trunk, leaving a tall snag and leading out from it, the other half that had broken off, still leaning on its broken shaft, the top caught in suspension on other trees. The reason we took note of the tree's unfortunate shape was that it presents as a potential danger, should blistering wind ever shove the top broken half off its perch onto the forest floor, since it is wedged directly above the trail where it crests after a long uphill climb from one of the valleys below a connecting bridge.

It -- as well as the poplars that our ravine-living beavers have gnawed halfway through and decided to abandon with winter's onset, perhaps to renew their harvesting in the spring -- represents a scenario that could occur that we'd prefer not to encounter.