Posts from, or about, our home.
50 days of non-stop travel around the world,… and then some.
Whew, it’s good to be back home, after fifty consecutive days of travel spanning the globe. We departed our flat in London on 15 October and, other than a brief visit to the flat for two nights of laundry and repacking, we’ve been on the road ever since.
Huge branches = lots of firewood.
Earlier this year, a large branch snapped off one of our silver maple trees. We sawed, split, and stacked it – firewood for a future winter! Yesterday, I climbed a ladder and sawed off the rest of the branch, which was 10-15′ long. It took an hour or more just to saw it into stove lengths, in part because this branch – just a branch, mind you – was thicker than our chainsaw bar. At one point I decided my Greenworks Pro electric saw (which is awesome, by the way) was just not cutting it. (Sorry, bad pun.) So I pulled out my trusty Stihl 026, our only remaining gas-powered tool. It is more than thirty years old, but still going strong!
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…
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!
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.
A weekly ritual.
I currently have six wildlife cameras in a hillside forest near home. Every week or two I take a walk, from one side of the hill, over the top, and down the other side, stopping to check each camera along the way. I enjoy the opportunity to be alone in the forest, off trail. I pick my own path, following my own sense of direction, recognizing familiar landmarks like a particular fallen tree, a fern-filled glade, or a notable boulder. I scan the forest floor for fresh tracks, listen for birdsong or the crackle of branches, and just immerse myself in the experience. I find it intellectually interesting and spiritually restorative – and a good workout, climbing up and down the steep hillside. Read on for the video!
Continue reading “Lyme wildlife – a walk in the forest”August treats us to bears, coyotes, a bathing owl, and more!
I woke at 2am to the howls of the coyotes, and they sounded close. It’s increasingly common for us to hear coyotes near our home, but in 33 years living in New Hampshire I’ve only once seen a coyote in-person. (They are mostly noctural, and I am not!) As noted in my post from June, I was thrilled when my wildlife camera caught a daylight video with a litter of coyote pups visiting a vernal pool. So, as I lay awake listening to the coyotes last night, I imagined those little pups were out there now, learning the ways of their pack, and wondered whether they might be in view of of one of my cameras.
Indeed my cameras brought us many exciting treats in August: a pack of coyotes, many views of both mama and papa bear (and baby bears too!), a fastidious barred owl, a nosy skunk, and more.
Seven groundhog pups!
Far in the back of our backyard is a pile of sticks – woody debris we’ve piled up for over 25 years as we trim trees and clear brush. With time, the pile has decomposed and compressed into a thick, firm dome-shaped structure. Last fall I discovered that some critter had burrowed under the pile. This spring I placed one of my wildlife cameras a few feet from the entrance and, in early June, I started capturing video of a big fat groundhog (woodchuck) emerging from the burrow. Then one day, I saw tiny faces appear deep in the burrow. Within a day, seven groundhog pups were exploring the burrow’s “front yard.” Wow, do these little pups have energy! Mama would come and go, presumably to feed (and perhaps to catch a little ‘me’ time), and sometimes to bring back a mouthful of dried leaves to freshen up the interior of their home. Meanwhile, the pups would play, wrestle, climb, and explore. I collected hundreds of minutes of video capturing some fascinating behaviors; here, I edited it down to an eight-minute compendium of my favorite clips. Settle in for eight minutes, and enjoy the video!
A day in the life of a solar panel…
I made a short timelapse movie using one of my wildlife cameras to photograph our solar panels throughout a solar day: after a foggy start, the solar panels track the sunshine from sunrise to sunset. This movie is from June 25 – less than a week after summer solstice – and at midday you can see the sun is very high in the sky; check out the video!
Who knows why, but the osprey have moved on.
It has been 10 days since I last saw the osprey building a nest, just upriver from here. Unfortunately, they seem to have given up and sought a better location. I saw one osprey, in flight, over the weekend – but not near the nest. One day, when I went to investigate, I found this fellow sitting in a nearby tree. I imagine eagles and osprey compete for territory – they both dine primarily on fish, especially when living alongside a river – and so the osprey may have been pushed out.
Notice the small, dark bird above and to his left. They both sat in contented companionship for tens of minutes, while I watched.
Continue reading “Eagle replaces Osprey?”
David Kotz 