An ice storm hit the park this morning, bringing down a few large branches and making the twigs look stunning.  The dogs stayed home because of the risk of falling limbs.  I heard several large trees creak and crack.  I cleared large branches from the path in several places.  The hazelnut branches dipped down into the path.  I left most of those alone because they should spring back up tomorrow when the ice melts.  Mostly, I took lots of pictures, as seen in this gallery.

Hazelnut trees and a few non-native hazelnut trees make up the majority of the middle story, between the shrubs and the big trees in Eagle Landing Park.  I might like to try a hazelnut someday, to see how they taste, but the squirrels and bluejays leave absolutely zero behind.  If you think you see a hazelnut ripe on the branch, it will turn out to be empty inside.  The native Corylus cornuta and the non-native Corylus avellana look very similar.  The non-native has catkins that are lighter in color, almost white.  The catkins of the native are darker, beige to almost brown.  When I asked the scientist from EarthCorp if we should worry about removing the  non-native Corylus avellana from ELP, he replied that it should be the last thing we worry about when removing non-native species.  They are so nearly identical in form, habit, and function that the non-natives don't pose a threat.  They aren't out-competing the native hazelnuts yet.  They don't appear to hybridize with each other.

I walked a couple of miles on the ice, and collected stone 19, pictured below on driftwood.