{"id":1747,"date":"2025-12-25T19:56:53","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T00:56:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/?p=1747"},"modified":"2025-12-25T19:56:53","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T00:56:53","slug":"long-cane-winter-solstice-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/long-cane-winter-solstice-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Cane Winter Solstice 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

For this day, I made my way to the Long Cane Horse Trail<\/A> 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. <\/p>\n

The “B” trailhead did show some redesign:
\n<\/A>
\nand the initial part of the trail heading to point “C” had a couple places where the overhead clearance was reduced:
\n<\/A>
\nBut aside from that, the trails all the way to “D” were quite passible.
\n<\/A>
\nThere were several open areas where the pine trees were taking over:
\n<\/A>
\nI’m sure they’ll sort themselves out as they grow, assuming the humans leave them alone.<\/p>\n

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<\/I> of bird chatter, almost like a dawn chorus. However, it was way too late in the day for that. At the moment:
\n<\/A>
\nAfter 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.<\/p>\n

I decided to stop at Gray’s Creek for lunch:
\n<\/A>
\nand noted that the sun didn’t get much higher at noon than it was at the Solstice.
\n<\/A><\/p>\n

I really need to do more of this sort of thing. Birds aren’t meant to be indoors, Blue Jays<\/A> are forest creatures..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1747"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1748,"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1747\/revisions\/1748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildcorvid.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}