An Alvar in January

I had the opportunity to explore some isolated alvars on Sunday. They were offside from cattle and snowmobiles and might be representative of wilderness recovery some 5 decades or so after the last serious attempts of humans to eke out a living from this land.

A burr oak:

Might be beautiful in Spring.
Lichen on overturned stumps - how old?

And a couple of typical(?) scenes of alvars:

There were tracks in the snow as well:

Any help in identifying any of them? Start with the moose and the snowshoe tracks and proceed from there.

W O B

Another day: wet, wet, wet

So here is the setting:

willow on the left, "double tree" oak on the right. And just a few minutes before I took this photo the osprey plunged into the water behind the little tree just in front of the flag pole, The water is quite rough/choppy and so I did not see the splash. And the osprey appeared to come up empty footed.

Both of us are getting better - just need to mount a "canon" on the balcony.

W O B