Friday's Hunt v 3.02

It's time for Eden Hills' Friday's Hunt again.  This week, our prompts are:  Starts with B, Week's Favourite, and Creature.

Starts with B
Today I thought I'd share some thoughts about bark.  All trees have it, and it tends to be overlooked as one is walking in the woods.  It's just part of the scenery.  However, bark has a lot of functions - it protects the trees in numerous ways, it provides habitat for insects and thus provides food for birds. It also provides humans with some useful products, such as cork.

I'm particularly fond of birch bark.  I have a lot of birch trees in my yard, and their bark makes a lovely contrast because of its predominantly white colour.  We have three species of birch here - white birch, yellow birch and grey birch.  I'm not an expert on differentiating between these species, although I believe that the two pictures of birch bark that I show below are two different species - the second one certainly has a more yellowish-golden look to it.

Sometimes bark also provides a habitat for moss and lichen.  Here is a close up of a tree in my woods that is certainly providing a good home for a variety of lichens.  I'm no expert on lichen identification, so I can't name these for you.

Week's Favourite(s)
I finished knitting my sheep hat, and I'm really happy with it!

I also took an interesting picture of snow that had fallen onto the top of a young spruce.  I think it sort of looks like a big white starfish sitting on top of the tree!

Creature
Most of you who have followed my blog for a while know that I'm very fond of the little creatures that scuttle around in the undergrowth of the woods.  In the winter, I think they have trouble finding enough food sometimes, and they are all too often food for other creatures.  I recently took some more pictures of a vole under my bird feeder.  I'm glad to have it visiting, and I hope it keeps its tummy full as a result!  The vole is hard to photograph because it's so quick, and I'm always taking the pictures through my home office window, but I got some reasonably good ones this time!

Peeking out to see if it's safe!

Grabbing a sunflower seed.

Peek-a-boo!

The vole and the squirrel have a series of tunnels under the snow.  I can tell which tunnel belongs to each creature by the size of the opening, although sometimes the vole uses the squirrel tunnels (but not vice versa).