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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 9h

Here is the location of Schlatter Lake, from a NOAA navigation chart I have hanging in the lab.

Map of Lake Superior showing depths as numerals spaced across the whie area and in the center is a topographic map of the Keweenaw peninsula shaded in light yellow.

Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 9h

Found some white pine x-sections collected 4 yrs ago hiding with the white cedars. Measured this one today as a treat. It is from the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula (Schlatter Lake) and dated strongly from 1524 to 1710 CE ; r = 0.5 w/ master chronology.

A partially decayed roughly half moon shaped log cross-section about 12 in wide.

This shape is common in white pine trees that fell into a lake but were still rooted. They float and eventually get colonized on the top by bog vegetation which decays the top half of the log while the bottom half of the log is preserved underwater. Sometimes after decades or longer the log breaks free from the shore and floats around the lake as a mobile bog island.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I cut this black locust last year and treated the stump and it still sprouted. Most sprouts were within 20 ft but one popped up at least 45 ft away (straight line) but the root also had to either go through or another 20 ft up and over an old pile of mine rocks.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Peak fall color is happening in the UP right now -- maybe a week early from what would be expected. We had some frosty nights two weeks ago which probably sped things up.

At center is a medium-sized sugar maple in a sunlit forest gap with brilliantly colored red (top of canopy) to yellow (base of canopy) leaves.
The background has a mix of bluesky and puffy white clouds.

The other forest vegetation closely surrounds the tree at center because it is a relatively young stand, perhaps 50 to 70 years old.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Here are some freshwater jellyfish we captured at the UP lake were we have a cabin. We put them in a big glass pitcher to have a closer look. The finger poking them is my 9yo daughter. Here is more about them: www.sciencefriday.com/segments/fre...

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Went to the Lake Superior [Keweenaw] shoreline during the second day of a gale. There were a dozen or so surfers combined at two stops, which is about a dozen more than usual.

A mixed sandy/cobble beach with big frothy whitecaps coming in. The water is stirred up so the shallow water is brown mixed with aquamarine. The deeper water on the horizon is dark blue. There are two surfers in the lake in this picture but may be too small to see.

Typical cobble beach stones with many red/orange and blue/gray-hued stones and some that have patchy white or green mineral inclusions.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Say you own 40 acres of conifer peatland in NE Wisconsin, what are you gonna do with it? I am betting it is not whatever this is. FYI I was actually doing research trying to re-locate white pine stands measured ~100 yrs ago before this distracted me for the past 15 mins.

Satellite imagery of a peatland conifer forest in 2008, bordered by some patches of hardwood forest. The trees are small little dots as seen from above.

Satellite imagery that looks like a grayscale image of the same peatland conifer forest in 2010 but with an X-shape with rounded edges clearcut into the forest, and with a circle of forest remaining at the center. The not-quite square boundaries are also cleared for roads as well as bisecting lines splitting the property into quadrants and a diamond shape connecting each of the bisecting lines where it intersects the property boundary.

The same image as before but shown in fall of 2013 so the hardwood patches at the boundaries are starting to turn yellow.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Doing some archive work and came across our smallest "sunken log" sample. It dates from 1514 to 1729. It had an avg ring-width of 0.42 mm. I am certain it is an old branch given the extensive compressionwood. The wood barely floats indicating it has a density approaching 1 gm/cm3.

A small ellipse or half-moon shaped wood cross-section with a clear plastic ruler overlaid showing the longest radii is about 9 cm. The rings are so narrow as to be barely discernible at this scale. The color of the wood is very orange to red with some bands that are more grey. A few internal spots of decay are present.

Same piece of wood in a plastic tub of water. One side sinks below the water surface while the other floats a few mm above the water surface.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

To make room in the lab this summer I brought home ~2 cubic yards of sunken white pine log "extra pieces" to burn this winter. These trees started growing, on average, around 1550, so it is a shame to release this carbon. But these were only small samples of the whole logs still in the lakes.

A pile of small chunks of log cross-sections in the corner of a basement woodshop with walls covered by oriented strand board.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

No cheating. Share the past photo of the sky in your camera roll. This is the last pic of the sky that doesn't feature my daughter or family. A couple weeks ago in Sylvania Wilderness.

Blue sky above with puffy white clouds that is also partially reflected by a bog pond surrounded by spruce and fir and grading into northern hardwoods on the upland horizons.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

This past year 80 acres was donated to our college. It is in one of the more remote areas of the UP and requires a steep 1.5 mile hike to get up to it. Initial visit exceeded expectations: Many old trees with no apparent history of logging -- and a beautiful pond rimmed by bedrock and bogs.

A large old hemlock with bedrock outcroppings and some younger hemlocks and white cedars. The understory is sun-dappled but sparse.

Another view of some large old hemlocks above the pond, with a sparse understory and a well developed mid-story of younger trees.

A small but old and twisted red pine tree hangs more or less horizontally over the pond on the top of a bedrock escarpment.

Shallow side of the a pond with floating bogs in the foreground and blue skies with puffy white to grey clouds overhead. In the background is the opposite shore, with a small bedrock peninsula with stunted trees in the center. The background also has some large white pine trees around the edge of the pond.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

This cedar 1×12 with ~300 rings caught my eye on this #Tree-ringTuesday. I'm in the middle of replacing rotten railings and adding a roof to this back deck & soon to be clubhouse for the 9yo.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Today I walked around an old dune and swale complex near Lake Superior. These are fairly common along the south shore, but this is a REALLY long one, stretching out in arcs that span 2 miles. There were no bugs and the blueberries were ripe and in endless supply on the old dunes. A fine day.

Looking down a swale between two dunes; bog vegetation, maybe 30 m wide extends into the distance and only seems to disappear because of the dune complex arcs to the right. On the sides are open forests of red pine and jack pine on the old dunes which are <1 m higher than the bog at their peak.

A typical nice cluster of ripe wild blueberries. It was difficult to not just eat blueberries all day long.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Yesterday I stopped by a remote reservoir. It is 1200 acres and does not have a single dwelling on the entire shore. There were many intact white pine stumps with 3-5' diameters along the shore. Here is just one primary root that someone cut off for a bonfire years ago. It has about 300 rings.

A picture of my hand (for scale) with a sun-bleached cross-section of a 10 to 12 inch diameter root from a large, tipped-over white pine stump. The surface of the cross section shows a bit of decay and a thin layer of lichen growth indicating it was cut off maybe 20 years ago. There are also shadows on the cross-section from some adjacent willow shrubs.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Went down a rabbit hole on FB marketplace. I searched "Barn Beams" and made a list of >100 unique locations in WI and another 40 in MI trying to sell beams from mostly 1800's dismantled barns. It seems this could be interesting sociological info and also represent untapped dendro resources...

Example image from FB Marketplace showing large beams from a dismantled barn in Wisconsin.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Historic travel corridor, in this case, was the overland trail between what is modern Marquette and L'anse. The rugged geography of the Huron Mts to the north pushes East/West overland travel into a narrow area.

Hinsdale (1931) map of Upper Michigan (I love this atlas, and the care that went into drawing out the landscape features) noting historic travel corridors in black. The small red circle, on the north (south-facing) slope of Teal Lake is where I was walking today. It has patchy red pine stands along most of the north shoreline that is undeveloped. The south and East shores are developed.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

It was >95 degrees today but I had some time to check out a red pine site along a historic travel corridor I have wanted to stop at for the past year. It did not disappoint; pictured below is another culturally modified tree -- used for resin harvesting. Only the 4th we have found in the UP.

An old red pine stump that was cut off high (about 3-4 ft height) by loggers with an axe, probably during the late 1800s or early 1900s. There were at least a dozen such stumps within a small area on a terrace above a lake. Sometime beforehand indigenous harvesting of resin took place by blazing the lower portion of the stem as seen clearly here.

A close up of the blaze mark on the stump with two fire scars around the edge that occurred fairly soon after resin harvesting. Then some decades later settlers cut the tree down.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Two ash trees below our house tonight offer a lesson in resistance. Almost all ash died in this area from emerald ash borer but these survived. One is survives only via epicormic sprouts while the other has a fully intact canopy. Hoping they can confer a bit of resistance to the next generation.

A white ash tree with a dead top but a lush new canopy from epicormic sprouts along the main stem about halfway up the tree. The area has been cleared of invasive Norway maple so these native trees have a chance to thrive.

A white ash tree with a normal looking canopy after being attacked by EAB. The area has been cleared of invasive Norway maple so these native trees have a chance to thrive.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Some MTU students in action collecting fire history data in the UP from our most recent data collection trip.

A person in safety gear facing away from the camera using a chainsaw to cut a weathered cat-face red pine stump within a dense forest of red pine, paper birch, and maple.

A second picture of a person in safety gear facing away from the camera using a chainsaw to cut a weathered cat-face red pine stump within a dense forest of red pine, paper birch, and maple. Now there is a cloud of sawdust as he cuts through the stump.

In the foreground is a pink lady slipper orchid. In the background is a student in safety gear holding a chainsaw and getting ready to cut a red pine stump that is low to the ground and cannot be seen because the ground slopes steeply downward into the background.

A student, with safety equipment uses a chainsaw to cut a large and very decayed red pine stump with a chainsaw for a second time to gain a cross-section of the wood. The decayed wood produces a lot of dust all around the student. The ground slopes steeply downward behind the student into a hemlock-dominated ravine.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

The field sites for coastal pine research in the UP are up there with the best of possible research locations.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Stopped by our cabin for an evening and got some kayak fishing time in. Lots of takers of all species and sizes on just one spinner buzzed over the emerging large-leafed pondweed (Potamogeton amplexifolius). Here are just two largemouth bass. The bass were not spawning yet but will be soon.

A 3-inch long largemouth mass hooked on a rooster tail spinner that is orange/yellow/green with a gold blade. In the background is a blue sky with puffy white clouds that is reflected in the lake and an undeveloped forested shoreline with emergent pine canopies.

My hand holding a bass by the mouth held out in front of me. It is good sized fish, maybe 15-16 inches long. The inside of a red kayak are shown as are a spinning reel resting on my legs and sandaled feet. The lake and forested shoreline are visible in the background. The bas has an injury on the top of it's gill plate. It is unclear how the injury may have occurred.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Went for a walk along a really rugged part of the UP woods last week and found some cool trees and plants. I also found yet another an unmarked vertical mineshaft that I managed not to fall down. Those things are all over the rocky parts of the UP.

A very old red pine on a rocky outcrop that was fire scarred and fell over when it's stem failed from decay at the top of the fire scar but then it just kept growing with it's remaining lateral branches taking over as leaders.

A nice cluster of fringed polygala or "gaywings". Which are small statured flowering plants in open forested settings with bright pink/white flowers that look somewhat like orchids.

A closer view of the flower structure of fringed polygala that is not entirely in focus, but the best I could do with my phone.

A selfie with me in a bug net and a camo Harris Walz ballcap posing in front of a giant old white pine snag that probably fell down about 20 years ago because most of the bark has sloughed off. The tree rises upslope behind me like with a giant sun-bleached white trunk (Thar she blows!). This is a rocky, low productivity site so I expect this tree was well over 300 years old when it died to get this big.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Me, two weeks into a summer of fire scar data collection...

"You're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat" meme showing the sheriff after first seeing the shark from the movie Jaws (1975) but with "Lab" replacing "Boat".

A laboratory with tables almost completely filled with red pine cross-sections in various stages of preparation and in the background are shelves and cabinets almost completely filled with cross-sections and cores from previous research.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

After a record or near record for precip over the past winter shallow groundwater levels are very high in the UP (and probably northern lower MI), continuing the 10-15 yr pluvial across the region. These flooded "ghost trees" are not from beaver activity, just groundwater fluctuation.

An upland pond in the UP of Michigan on a sunny spring afternoon. The pond is surrounded by red and white pine trees in the background. In the foreground are many dead sapling-sized pine trees. To be that size and be killed by high water levels the "ghost trees" probably germinated in the late 1990s or early 2000s when drier condition were more regular.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

MS student Isabella Stone and I went scouting a beautiful coastal red pine site today. After meeting with one of the private landowners we now have access to sample all ~200 acres. Here is a "peel scar" on a snag from indigenous resin harvesting practices.

A woman in a red fleece and a cap standing in a mostly red pine forest next to a snag (dead tree) with an oblong scar centered at about 1.5 m height. Around that original scar, which is now charred, so tool marks are not visible, are multiple fire scars. It looks like this tree died 50 or more years ago but because the wood is impregnated with resin it has been more resistant to decay than an average dead red pine tree.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

My favorite local copse of paper birch in the late afternoon today. All the trees in the foreground are growing out of mine rock but the birch trees would not have been in this location without that intense disturbance many decades ago.

In the foreground are sunlit and mostly small diameter (<8 inches) paper birch stems (white and black bark) amidst a background of evergreen foliage (balsam fir, Northern white cedar and white spruce). There is a bit of blue sky in the background and there are no leaves on the deciduous trees yet because it is still too early in spring here.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Pulled out the main saws for collecting red pine fire history samples. They are all purring like kittens and ready for me to teach chainsaw safety to a crew of four next week. The big saw is nearly brand new and the oldest saw I have had since 2011 or so when I used it on redwood sections.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

The phenology is late here because we have had a Houghton record 360" of snow this winter. The first of the forest-origin trout lilies in this area popped open this weekend. We found this one after going to a known population with a southern aspect and scanning thousands of individuals.

A single nodding yellow flower, barely open, hanging from a pink stalk that extends between two mottled leaves that have alternating lime green and a faded maroon hues. The leaf extending toward the camera, underneath the flower also has yellow pollen on it's surface. The small plant is extending up amidst dry brown leaf litter and twigs.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Our research on submerged pine logs in the UP includes a story connecting forest demography to historic fire and Indigenous use/mgt (more later). As such I have been mapping historic Indigenous settlements, trails and river travel corridors from multiple sources to understand where people were.

Yellow triangles are Indigenous settlements from the 1600s-1800s CE. Red dots are settlements known from early archeological records. White lines are trails/travel corridors and blue lines are canoe-navigable river systems connecting the Lake Superior region to the Mississippi basin or Lake Michigan with minimal portages between drainages and/or trails.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Here is an example red pine x-section we collected last fall. We should be dating these fire scars within the week and collecting a few hundred more samples over the summer. I just gotta grade 70 more final exams...

A partially decayed red pine cross-section cut from a stump adjacent to Lake Superior showing 5 or 6 fires over about 200 years.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

In shady areas we have had 4 months of continuous snow cover. Today I took 4 representative pics under a northern white cedar canopy on the edge of the melting snow approximating litterfall from Dec - April. Life can be rough in the winter for these trees.

Green and orange cedar leaves, cedar cones and seeds as well as cedar twigs on snow.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Yesterday after I entreated students to fill out instructor evaluation surveys I sat down in the front of the class for a student presentation and my chair broke off completely. Yes, I went awkwardly sprawling and there was much laughter. Not sure if my unintentional comedy will earn higher marks.

Me holding the bottom of my broken seat that catastophically failed when I sat down.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

It finally felt like spring today and then ~1000 pounds of ice and snow fell off the roof and dented the steel basement door on the right. The work clearing snow and ice is now well into its 5th month here.

A home with an exposed basement with two doors with a pile of ice and snow in front. The background shows snow piled up around some stacked firewood and lumber and some cedar trees.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

My first PhD student, Victor Humanes Fuente, will defend his PhD next week Wednesday on the following topics: 1) L Superior lake-effect isoscapes 2) Connecting 800 yrs of pine establishment to fire and indigenous migrations along the shore of L Superior 3) A >500 yr L Superior temp reconstruction

PhD Defense announcement for Victor Humanes Fuente entitled "What can white pine tree rings tell us about the environmental history of the Lake Superior region?" which is overlayed on top of an illustration of a wood cross-section he sampled from a lake. The lower panel shows a picture of Victor in a wetsuit and holding an oar while balancing on top of floating logs lodged in a green wetland area with white pine trees in the background. The detailed text states "Learn about Victor Humanes Fuente’s doctoral research investigating the capacity of Eastern white pines to store environmental information in their tree rings. He will highlight how lake-effect climate has influenced spatial patterns in tree physiology, how fire and humans have historically modulated 800 years of pine establishment patterns in the Central Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and how Lake Superior water temperatures have changed over the past 500 years, as reconstructed from tree rings."

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Bobcat track in fresh snow from this morning. The rabbits and chipmunks are increasingly active aboveground so I imagine the leanest days of winter are now over for whomever left this.

A single bobcat track pointed downward toward the camera with a partial view of my left hand for scale. The track is about the size of what would be expected for a very large domestic cat.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Makes me think about this Powerpoint slide from ~seven years ago that I have used in multiple presentations but needs to be updated for climate disasters.

Image show a distribution of Billion-dollar disasters by state on the left broken down by early vs recent time periods and based on "Drought" for the Western US and "Freeze" for the Eastern US. Adjacent is an image of the conterminous US states broken down the middle and highlighted by an image of forest wildfire in the West and snow-covered boreal conifers in the East.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

I never took courses in climate science, paleoclimate, geology, etc. So, there is a lot I don't know. Does anyone know why some geoscientists plot their temporal data backwards from conventional left being further back in time? I never know how to explain this to students.

Example ice core data from Antarctica compared to marine sediment core data over the last ~3 million years.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

Here is the current snow level in Houghton in our back yard -- to the top of a four ft fence that is supposed to keep our dog in the yard.

Snow piled up to the top of a chain link fence with trees in yhe background.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Ooh, this is very tempting for a dendrochronologist. A big stack of old growth white pine wood only 15 minutes away.

Facebook marketplace ad showing a stack of white pine boards salvaged from a building on Calumet. Most of the old buildings there were built in the late 1800s.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

IDK, maybe you need some minks right now? As seen at our cabin in the UP of Michigan last July 4th.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

Students successfully completed the Dice Degrees Challenge this morning within a 50 minute class. They had fun and I think this will help them better understand lecture materials where we look at a lot of time-series data for understanding evidence of climate change.

Figure showing dice degrees displayed as 4 sets of colored lines spanning 1900-2026 that students generated by rolling dice. Each of the four colors is a group; the differences represent how variation in inter-annual climate can lead to different rates of warming in different locations despite the same forcing.

A figure show the overall mean trend in dice degrees across groups from 1900-2026, but broken into three time periods to illustrate to students how it is possible to take a narrow section of years and find no detectable warming even though the long-term trend (here = 2.99 degrees/century) is significant.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Prepping an intro to climate change exercise for Monday where groups of students will be creating 5 synthetic temperature time series based on the # of sides of the dice being scaled to atmospheric CO2 concentrations from 1900 to 2026.

Five sets of dice that are multicolored and include 6, 8, 10, 12 and 20-sided dice.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

For this #TreeRingTuesday that I got to visit Santa Cruz Island in 2014: This island is off the coast of Southern CA. I led tree-coring efforts to understand forest mortality patterns. The island is home to dwarf foxes that are not afraid of people. Really cool place I was lucky to visit.

Younger me in the foreground -- and overlooking a dry part of the island and the Pacific Ocean in the distant background. The only native conifer, bishop pine, occurs here in small patches, seen behind me, it occurs almost exclusively where fog impacts certain elevations and slopes.

Me explaining how to core a tree to an ecophys colleague. We are next to a relatively large bishop pine growing in a relatively lush valley on SCI.

The weathered end grain on the top of a ~100 year old fencepost on SCI that was cut from coast redwood and had 200-300 rings.

A dwarf gray fox. It looks like a fox but it is smol and retains a big floofy tail.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Last October, on a hunch I checked out this undeveloped lake on industrial timberland in the UP. It is mostly surrounded by ~200 to >250 year old white pines and hemlocks. There were many ducks, fish and a pair of swans that day. The foresters/loggers have been keeping this one a secret.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

At a local arts and crafts fair before Xmas I saw this bowl and immediately grabbed it and looked over my shoulder in case Frank Costanza was about to rain blows down upon me. For this #Tree-RingTuesday here is a sugar maple bowl that has over 125 tree-rings.

A wood bowl held upside down to show the cross-sectional face of the wood displaying many tree-rings. The pith and light brown heartwood are near the lip of the bowl at the bottom/center of the image. Lighter colored sapwood constitutes most of the outer sides of the bowl. A crack with dark brown/black mineral stain proceeds from the pith outwards toward the edge of the indicates it was there when the tree was alive, and at this northern edge of the species range could likely be a "frost crack". Which can cause radial cracks to form in sugar maples during extremely cold winter temperatures.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Finally, Just have to share this image. It is the last page of a 1947 USFS pub on pole blight. research.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/4...

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Still have the shirt from the 2002 North Central Forest Pest workshop. In MO, the program focused on red oak borer and armillaria. But what I remember most is the first report of Emerald Ash Borer spreading outside Detroit and how a pall swept over the conference.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

We need some more tree-posting on this app. This is the oldest known living Douglas-fir in Oregon (and maybe in North America?) I cored it to near the pith in 2006 and was able to re-visit it recently with some other forest scientists. It is at least 1015 years old, but probably ~1050.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Found this petrified wood on a gravel bar in western Oregon while on a canoe trip years ago. Not the most beautiful specimin but it has about 200 annual tree rings visible after I had it sliced in half. Most wood from OR dates to 20-40 MYA so it is the oldest wood I keep in my office on display.

Brown and black rock about the size of a large grapefruit sitting in a sunlit window.

Same rock flipped to over to reveal weathered cross-sectiom of fossilized wood.

Cut cross-section of petrified wood revealing annual rings. The wood is largely a shiny, ebony black.

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Steve Voelker @thetreecorener.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

Action shot of a pine grosbeak from when I arrived at work this morning. Took this with my phone just a few feet away -- birds don't usually cooperate so well.

Close-up picture of a gray bird with a dusky orange cap and largish black beak open and actively snacking on an array of brightly red to orange-colored crabapples. The background is a white pine tree and there is snowflakes fluttering down as blurry white spots across the image.

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