For a number of reasons, it’s been a difficult year for me to get out & about. But I would not be restrained on the day of the Winter Solstice, a special day for all my wild familiars. That it took me almost a week to get this posted is just par for this year.

For this day, I made my way to the Long Cane Horse Trail in Abbeville County, SC, USA. Despite the name, it’s actually a multi-use trail for horses, bikes, and hikers. Concernedly, the web site still says the area is closed due to damage from Helene, but as that was over a year ago, I suspected the accuracy of the web site. Sure enough, there were no signs about any sort of closures and once once on the trail, I saw horse and bike tracks.

The “B” trailhead did show some redesign:

and the initial part of the trail heading to point “C” had a couple places where the overhead clearance was reduced:

But aside from that, the trails all the way to “D” were quite passible.

There were several open areas where the pine trees were taking over:

I’m sure they’ll sort themselves out as they grow, assuming the humans leave them alone.

But the main event was the Winter Solstice, when the sun shines on its most southern point on earth. Curiously, as that moment, 10:03 EST, approached, I started to hear a LOT of bird chatter, almost like a dawn chorus. However, it was way too late in the day for that. At the moment:

After the moment passed, the bird chatter subsided to a more normal level. I didn’t hear anything else like that whole rest of the time I was in the woods, including coming back through that same area. Could be coincidence, but I suspect the birds were observing the Solstice in their own way.

I decided to stop at Gray’s Creek for lunch:

and noted that the sun didn’t get much higher at noon than it was at the Solstice.

I really need to do more of this sort of thing. Birds aren’t meant to be indoors, Blue Jays are forest creatures..