Last weekend, some friends and I woke up to a foot of snow blanketing the pines outside our windows and the coldest October temperatures on record in the Blackfoot Valley. We pulled on layers of fleece and Gore-tex in the early morning and trudged away from our little lodge to a pond not far up the road. I hovered at the edge of the sheet of ice, pondering its thickness, gently set my foot down in the snow, and took a tiny step before sliding out onto the frozen water, turning happy circles in the sunshine.

As we hurled the fine, powdery snow into the air to watch it sparkle, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a black shape slowly circling against the blue sky, getting ever so slightly smaller with each turn. …

This Field Note was written by Paulina Jenney. Would you be interested in writing one? Contact Allison De Jong, Field Notes editor, at adejong [at] montananaturalist [dot] org or 406.327.0405. Please visit the Field Notes website at the Montana Natural History Center for more information.