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Lyme wildlife – beavers

A new location allowed me to capture hundreds of videos of beavers.

In late October I purchased a new set of wildlife cameras, which allowed me to move the older cameras to a completely new location. It’s not far from the earlier locations, and located along a brook that has been dammed by beavers. I quickly discovered a path that had clearly been recently (and heavily) used by the beavers, commuting from the water to the woods, where they had felled several trees and must have been dragging the branches back to their pond just upstream of their dam. I placed a pair of cameras on a single tree – one camera pointed uphill toward the woods, and the other aimed downhill toward the water. I placed another camera across the brook where the dam met the shore. Within hours my memory cards were filling with beavers! Read on…

Bangalore

Like a second home.

Ah, home. I was excited to return to Bangalore, after having been away for six years. Bangalore, especially the area around the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), still feels a bit like home (we lived here for a year in 2008-09). This week, I am in Bangalore with a group of Dartmouth colleagues to explore a potential academic relationship with IISc, and for me it is also an opportunity to reconnect with colleagues and friends from our life here 16 years ago. Read on!

Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) building at Indian Institute of Science (IISc).

Delhi – Sunday

Exploring old Delhi.

As I walked through the hotel gates on Sunday morning, Raju was there, as arranged after yesterday’s outing. I reminded him I had less time today, and asked to go to Old Delhi. I suggested he drop me at Jama Masjid (the largest mosque in Delhi and, I think, in India), because I knew that neighborhood involves many small streets and alleys filled with tiny stalls in which vendors sell every imaginable product or service. It was Sunday morning, so it would be less crowded than usual … but no doubt full of interesting sights and sounds. Read on!

Delhi – Saturday

It feels good to be back!

India is one of my favorite places to visit. After we spent a year living in Bangalore, I used to visit at least once every year… until Covid interrupted. As a result, I have been away for six years. This week I had the opportunity to return to India on Dartmouth business… spending a few days in Delhi and a few days in Bangalore (Bengaluru). I arrived in Delhi two days early, giving me time to explore some of my favorite places. Although this blog post covers only one day, there is a lot to say… read on!

California

Happy Thanksgiving!

I spent Thanksgiving week in San Francisco and San Jose – the first half working remotely from a hotel; the second half with family for the holiday. I had a few opportunities to get out and make some photographs, and share a gallery with photos from four experiences: a south-Indian restaurant in San Francisco; planes and shorebirds (and the people who watch them!) at SFO airport; fall foliage in suburban San Jose; and the massive, ancient trees of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, over in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Enjoy!

Giant redwood trees – Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Autumn 2024

It was a beautiful fall season.

Autumn has ended, and we are now well into what locals call “stick season.” After summer comes the fall, when the hardwood trees turn various shades of yellow, orange, red, and brown, bringing new color to the hilly New Hampshire landscape just before it tucks in for a long winter’s nap. This year we have had a beautiful fall season, with sunny/warm weather and brilliant fall colors. In this quick blog post I want to share a few photos from three of my favorite aspects of autumn at Dartmouth and in New Hampshire: fall foliage, the homecoming bonfire, and Diwali. Read on!

Wildlife cameras – October

No bears! Maybe they’ve all hibernated.

October was another busy month for the wildlife cameras near my home. As the oaks dropped their leaves, the turkeys and squirrels were busy foraging for acorns and other delicacies. Deer – both does and bucks – were plentiful. I enjoyed the comings and goings of a red fox, trotting past my cameras at all hours of the day and night… as well the plodding of a porcupine. For me, the bobcats are still most exciting – whereas the most interesting may be a tough, scar-faced buck, and the most mysterious is the noctural appearance of some sort of weasel.

This month I have posted just one video – less than seven minutes long – with the highlights. I’ve organized it into three locations, and at each location the clips are presented in chronological order. I find it interesting to see the same location visited by several different critters, all in the same day. Sometimes the predator passes by only a few hours behind their prey!

Wildlife cameras – September

Spoiler alert: Not all the cameras survived!

September was a busy month in the forests of Lyme New Hampshire, as the foliage started to turn and forest residents began their preparations for winter. This month I’m organizing the videos by location – with each video mostly in chronological order. It’s interesting to see the variety of animals that pass by a given point – sometimes within minutes of each other. I captured first-looks at two species I’ve never seen on camera before: a solo flying squirrel, and a group of strolling crows, both foraging among the leaf litter. Unfortunately, one of my cameras did not survive the month! Read on.

Moosilauke mystery

Searching for history in the alpine forests of Mount Moosilauke.

Some of my friends have, for several years, been interested in locating a long-lost trail on Mount Moosilauke, one dating back to 1880… and that allegedly led down from the summit to a ledge overlooking Jobildunc Ravine, with a fine view of its watery cascades. With the thin information available in old documents and oral histories, we first tried to find the viewpoint – which supposedly had an iron railing to protect guests from the steep cliffs below – in June 2022. Today, after some in our group had carefully studied recent maps (satellite images, aerial photographs, and LIDAR scans), we set out again. It was a glorious fall day to bash about in the woods. Did we find it? Read on!

Comet (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS)

A new comet!

September treated us to a lunar eclipse, which I had the opportunity to photograph, and now October has brought us a good view of celestial visitor C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS). The evening sky was clear last night, but it took quite a while for me to find this new comet – still far above the western horizon more than an hour and twenty minutes after sunset. My first glimpse appeared in my peripheral vision – it was easier to see what I was not looking directly at it. I finally lined up my camera for a couple of decent shots.