Sun dog

We had a little more snow this morning—enough to freshen the cross-country ski track—and after I did my two miles, I had to head into town to shop for food and supplies. (Hey, a naturalist can not live on photos alone.) On my way, I stopped at the nearby farm fields to scan for Canada Geese and who knows what else, and as I was watching the snow for signs of life, I noticed the sky grow darker and darker to the east as the cloud-line of a cold front barreled through the area. I got a few undistinguished shots of its passage, but in a clearer part of the sky to the south, I noticed a discrete patch of color, 22 degrees from the sun. This is known as a sun dog, and it's caused by the refraction and prisming of light due to ice crystals in the atmosphere. You can see sun dogs—the moon will do this, too—at any time of the year when it's cold and icy aloft, but winter is the favorite time for viewing this phenomenon, which is why I often refer to them as "snow dogs." In his wonderful book, Sundial of the Seasons, the great Connecticut nature-essayist Hal Borland wrote that "Sun dogs and moon dogs are beautiful accents to a winter day or night as the rainbow is to a showery Summer day." To that I can only add, "Amen."

the nature-essayist Hal Borland wrote in his book  that