HOLDEN – Audubon volunteer Jerry Smith, his son Justin, 14 and a third Audubon volunteer were checking the ice on Fields Pond in Holden. The entire lake was covered with a half inch of fairly solid ice, which did not break when they tossed small stones onto it. Heavier stones broke the ice, creating small holes.

They were standing on Audubon property when Justin noticed something swimming under the ice in the shallow water. It was a mink swimming along under the ice, apparently looking for air. It found an air pocket under the ice not 20 feet from shore. The air pocket was about a foot across and a half inch thick. The mink stopped at the big flat bubble for a breath of air and continued on its way.

At one point, the mink swam under the clear ice in only about six inches of water, less than four feet away from Jerry and Justin. Then Jerry, an avid photographer, exclaimed, “Why is my camera in the car?”

But it was too late to retrieve the camera. The mink continued under the ice, along the shore and out of sight.

In other years, reports of turtles and muskrats swimming under the ice have been brought to the Fields Pond Audubon Center.

A similar phenomenon was seeing a star-nosed mole frozen into clear ice on a slow-moving stream. Every little tentacle encircling its nose was visible, and every whisker, too. It was found after a January thaw when the mole swam out of its burrow into the water, and could not find a pocket of air, nor its burrow again.

Anther interesting behavior was demonstrated recently by a wild turkey. Several drivers approaching the Fields Pond Audubon Center saw a line of about 15 turkeys crossing the road, step by step, in a perfect line. As they crossed, one turkey was “standing guard” in the middle of the road. The observers said the turkey appeared to glare at the oncoming cars, even though they had stopped for the “parade.”