I woke up this morning hearing freezing rain warnings on the radio. I was not too happy about that since today’s winter nature walk with Miles Hearn was happening at 10:00 AM at Ashbridges Bay across the other side of Toronto.

The good news was the freezing rain never materialized. The bad news was a light rain, which persisted throughout the walk. Fortunately, I layered up well and have a good rain jacket from my Canada Post days. I also tucked a pair of hand warmers into a pair of thrummed mittens, so I was toasty.

It turned out to be a lovely walk. The chickadees at Ashbridges Bay are very bold and I’m convinced some of them were following us around. Miles carries seed and we stopped so those who wanted to could hand-feed the chickadees. We also saw cardinals, gulls and a variety of ducks, including gadwalls, long tail ducks, common goldeneye, mallards, buffleheads and mergansers.

The plant I enjoyed seeing most this morning was sea buckthorn. There was one bush still full of berries. Sea buckthorn berries are edible and nutritious – but sour – and are good in baking.

I’m fascinated by the ice formations in the lake and along the shore. When I first looked out into the bay, it looked like it was totally frozen over, but as we walked along away from the beach it became obvious it wasn’t actually frozen and this icy surface was undulating. I shot a bit of video.

Here are some shots of some of prettiest ice formations we saw on today’s walk.