bald spot

bald spot (plural bald spots)

1. An area on the head which, due to hair loss, has little or no hair.

   Synonym: bald patch

2. An area where a covering layer is absent; for example, a place where there is a break in the forest covering an area, or where snow has melted.
   • 1904, Leo Tolstoy, translated by Leo Wiener, The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy: Anna Karénin, page 244:

     from the forest, there lay before him, over an enormous extent of space, an even, velvety cover of green, without a single bald spot or washout, only here and there, in the swales, spotted with remnants of melting snow. He was not angered by the sight of a peasant horse and yearling colt, which were trampling his sprouting fields (he ordered a peasant whom he met to drive them off), [...]

   • 2013, Christopher White, The Melting World: A Journey Across America’s Vanishing Glaciers, →ISBN:

     He joins Fagre and Erich at the edge of the rock rib where it meets the ice and snow. They uncoil the rope and tie bowlines to clip into their harnesses. The two men look to Fagre for instructions. Dan Fagre just points, unusual for a loquacious man. Ahead, about two hundred yards into the glacier, toward the headwall, is a bald spot. The snow has melted away or been scoured by the wind to reveal a stretch of disturbed ice and crevasses about the size of a football field.