Local ice fishers are here in force, having hauled their warming shacks, ice augurs, and fishing gear onto the ice with pickup trucks. The odd bald eagle shows up to pick at fish guts strewn on the ice. When the ice booms regularly again, I ll know it s time for break-up. The ospreys should return from Mexico by mid-April. Two days after the ranch closed for winter, a mink ran past Cabin A s porch shortly after dawn.
Mink have bullet heads, cartridge bodies, and smoky tails.
Mink rarely leave the shelter and richer fare of streamside, but this one perhaps a juvenile took a shortcut through the sagebrush flat in front of Cabins A and B to the usual mink path under the bridge. Its den is under willows on Torrey Creek near Ring Lake. May. Water ouzels also range near the bridge. During the first week of March the ouzels finally paired. In full sunshine I watched the male and female fly back and forth beneath the bridge, flying a hundred yards upstream then downstream, chittering like the gears of toys, often pulling up short and lighting on a rock to dip a few times before plunging into the fast water.