I got one of my rare early starts when I visited the park on the first full day of winter. I was parked and out of my car shortly after noon. I packed my pocket with peanuts and got my gear together before starting off on my walk. I moved slowly and occasionally looked at the trail behind me. Soon I noticed that I had a squirrel showing some interest in my activity.

I went to the bottom of the hill and stood near a small culvert while holding a peanut up for the furry observer to see. It began moving in my direction, but took a rather circuitous route. At last it got to me and received its reward. It scampered off to bury the peanut.

Several other squirrels were watching from vantage points near the trail. Soon I had more of them coming to me for food. They would take a peanut and waddle off a few feet away to eat. My guests lost interest and appetites about the same time I ran out of treats.

I returned to my car to replenish the snack supply in my pocket and resumed my walk on Til's Trail.

I have been playing a little game with myself in which I look in the park for letters of the alphabet to photograph. I recorded a full alphabet with my first camera, and now I'm attempting the same thing with my new one. Most of what I've captured so far are the results of human-inflicted graffiti upon trees and structures, but I have found a few naturally occurring letters in the bark of trees.

As I was studying the bark of a white oak tree I noticed something else. A tiny red spot with legs was moving about. While I watched, it tried to wedge itself into a crevice in the bark. I got a pine needle and encouraged my little discovery to abandon its safer environs for a setting more conducive to photography.

I got out my close-up lens and held it in front of my longer zoom on my camera. I then found my subject and zoomed in on it. The addition of the lens in front of the regular one increased my ability to enlarge the image of my tiny subject. I came away with a photo of a creature that was actually about 1/8 inch long but appeared to be almost an inch in length.

Photographing at such a close range has a number of built in problems. The portion of the image that is in sharp focus is extremely limited and simply swaying a short distance changes a good photo into a blurred and unusable image. I took a number of shots of the same thing in hopes that I might get lucky. Of the eight or nine frames I exposed, I got only two that were worth the trouble.

When I looked at the images on my computer, I saw that my subject had eight legs. I had a picture of a red mite of some sort. I had hoped that it would turn out to be a harvest mite, the parent of our summer red bugs, but when I looked up an image on the Web, I saw that my creature was different. I am still in search of a positive ID.

A short distance past the large metal culvert that goes under the trail I saw some shimmering spider webs. A little closer inspection revealed a number of tiny orb webs about three inches in diameter. The little engineers were sitting at the centers of their creations.

I got to thinking about these small arachnids. Apparently the warmer weather triggered a large ballooning event among them. They had moved out on their own and set up housekeeping following some ancient built-in instructions. They had no notion of the time of year or what to expect next from the weather.

Unfortunately, we had a day of drenching rain immediately after I observed all the newly constructed webs. The next time I inspected the area I found that they had been washed clean of any traces of spider activity. I was a bit saddened by the realization that all the industrious little animals had probably perished. Nature didn't give them a perfect plan of action.

I checked the area again a day or so later and found several new webs. Either some of the original inhabitants survived or a new batch took up the slack. I choose to believe the former. I can imagine the tiny spiders hiding under leaves or logs until the deluge had ended. My supposition was based upon the fact that several of the webs were constructed in the same locations in which I had seen them previously.

Near Wildflower Hill I found a little yellow sulphur butterfly at rest on some green leaves. I crept up on the insect and took several shots as I got closer. The last time I tried to photograph a sulphur, it flew away before I got close enough for the photos to matter. I had better success with this attempt.

I had a pleasant experience when I walked along on the detour through the Azalea Gardens. I heard the calls of a high-flying crow. I scanned the sky and finally spotted the bird. Another one then came flying along in the opposite direction making similar sounds. I love the cries of distant crows. They sound so primitive and rustic.

I headed off to the boardwalk built above the Wetlands. The trail that led into the woods was flanked by several spring flowers already in bloom. They might have been narcissus or a hybrid daffodil of some sort. I also noticed that there were a great number of bird-sown nandina bushes sporting their distinctive clusters of red-orange berries.

As I was leaving the lower portion of the boardwalk, I happened to look at the edge of a trash container and saw a little brown anole all stretched out in the warming rays of the sun. It didn't seem particularly interested in leaving that comfort while I took a series of photographs. A few feet farther along, I found a second anole clinging to the bark of a pine tree - also soaking up the warmth of the sun.

For months I have been walking the trail and seeing little or nothing worth writing about. This one visit on the first full day of winter made up for that previous extended dry spell. I had a truly memorable day once again while walking the trails of Kiroli Park.

A new set of photos awaits you at: http://home.earthlink.net/~memudge/.