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The Daily Bucket - The Winter Freeze/Thaw Cycle [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-01-10

The freeze/thaw cycle is part of winter where I live in southeast Michigan. It’s one reason why our roads so terrible by the end of winter. Warm spells mean water fills the cracks and joints. The ice that forms on refreezing expands and breaks, first small, then larger, pieces of asphalt and concrete. For the lakes and wetlands I frequent, it means a changing cast of waterfowl. Shorelines freeze first, meaning dabblers must move on, but leaving deeper water for diving ducks. A prolonged cold spell will freeze even those areas. Fast moving rivers rarely freeze over, and so become a gathering place for ducks, geese and swans. That doesn’t happen every year, but when it does, the Bald Eagles come to where the prey is.

THE DAILY BUCKET IS A NATURE REFUGE. WE AMICABLY DISCUSS ANIMALS, WEATHER, CLIMATE, SOIL, PLANTS, WATERS AND NOTE LIFE’S PATTERNS.

WE INVITE YOU TO NOTE WHAT YOU ARE SEEING AROUND YOU IN YOUR OWN PART OF THE WORLD, AND TO SHARE YOUR OBSERVATIONS IN THE COMMENTS BELOW.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE PURPOSE AND HISTORY OF THE DAILY BUCKET FEATURE, CHECK OUT THIS DIARY: DAILY BUCKET PHENOLOGY: 11 YEARS OF RECORDING EARTH'S VITAL SIGNS IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD

The Great Lakes Basin. Zoomed. Lake St. Clair is the circled heart-shaped lake. Kensington is inland, where the Huron River loops from west to east north of Ann Arbor.

Kensington Metropark

I wrote a Bucket recently about the change in temps effecting the water at Kensington Metropark in December. Temps had been mild for most of the fall, leaving lots of open water. A December cold spell froze much of the shallow water, which meant the ducks had largely moved on. Since then, we had a warm up with three days of rain, followed by a recent cold blast of consistently below freezing temps. The temps are a little below the average range, but not by much. I’m happy we avoided the worst of the early winter storms, at least so far.

The lakes at Kensington are formed by dams, so the water is relatively shallow and freezes quickly.

Kent Lake in the late December cold spell. That’s all ice, with no open water and not a duck in sight.

The title photo is Kent Lake on January 3, 2025, as is the photo below. Although the temps had been below freezing for a few days, the warm up had unfrozen the lake and the refreeze was just starting. It was still ice free enough that Sandhill Cranes could pick along the shorelines.

Sandhill Cranes in the snow at Kent Lake, January 3rd.

Trumpeter Swans and Mallards on January 3 in the shallow water. Ice was forming at the edges here too. I also saw Northern Shovelers and Gadwalls closer to shore, and Buffleheads, and Common Mergansers further out.

A Common Goldeneye drake flies past part of a raft of Common Mergansers in Kent Lake.

Lake St. Clair

Lake St. Clair is a shallow lake that lies between Great Lakes Huron to the north and Erie to the south. The St. Clair River flows between Lake Huron and Lake St. Clair, and the Detroit River flows between there and Lake Erie. On January 1, 2025, the water was open with too many ducks to count.

A small part of a huge raft in Lake St. Clair at Anchor Bay, January 1, 2025. The ducks were mostly Redheads, Greater Scaup and canvasbacks, with a smattering of Mergansers, Goldeneyes and Buffleheads.

Another view of Anchor Bay, here at Lake St. Clair Metropark. Ice free, with a Greater Scaup in the foreground. There are thin rafts of ducks out there, more Scaups, Redheads, Canvasbacks and Ruddy Ducks.

I visited again just over a week later, on January 8th.

Light ice as far as I could see and not a duck in sight. For the past couple years, after sustained cold spells, I’ve seen way more ice fishermen than I have ducks in this spot. I don’t think the ice is thick enough yet to be safe to walk on.

Lake Huron and the St. Clair River

As noted above, north of Lake St. Clair is Lake Huron, with the St. Clair River between them. As one of the Great Lakes, Lake Huron is sizeable and it takes a long period of cold temps for lake ice to form. The St. Clair River, like the Detroit River, moves fast enough where it generally does not freeze.

Lake Huron at Port Huron, January 8, 2025. The lake ends just to the right where the St. Clair River starts. Sarnia, Ontario, is the land at the horizon to the right. Snow squalls fill the horizon at the center and left. The water was frozen at the shore, and slushy beyond that.

The slushy water was no problem for this freighter, which was headed north. Or for a pair of Canada Geese.

One winter visitor I look forward to is the Long-tailed Duck. There are thousands of them in a good year. This week, there were small rafts flying from the St. Clair River into Lake Huron, and then drifting back with the current as they dove. Further south along the river, there were huge rafts.

A small segment of a raft of Long-tailed Ducks in flight in the St. Clair River, Marysville MI. Zoomed

A closer view of a raft in flight at Port Huron. There were slushy areas of ice, all moving quickly from left (north) to right (south).

This immature Long-tailed Duck drake was diving close to shore with two others. (I’d misidentified him as a female. Thanks to nookular for the correction.) Who couldn’t love such a pretty duck? The breeding drakes are even more gorgeous.

Three years ago, we had a really long spell of cold weather. Long and cold enough for the Detroit River to freeze in spots. Ice breakers had to be deployed to keep the shipping lanes open. The ice forced ducks to congregate in small areas, which brought Bald Eagles and other predators. As crazy as it sounds, even to me, I hope for cold weather for this reason.

The Detroit River at Dingell Park, Ecorse, MI, winter 2022. Windsor, Ontario is in the background. The ice was thick enough for a pack of coyotes to travel across to a small island. The gray oblong birds are Great Blue Herons, who somehow eke out a living through the Michigan winter. Zoomed

Winter 2022, a Bald Eagle dines on a fish it caught, as a Common Goldeneye beats a hasty retreat.

Now it’s your turn.

What’s up in nature in your neighborhood?

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