Home – Page 2 – David Kotz

Osprey nest

A new couple is building a home in our neighborhood.

When I row my shell upriver, I pass a manufactured nesting platform – a tall telephone pole with a crude wooden frame nailed on top. It stands on a tiny spit of land, adjacent to the river, and separated from River Road by a small wetland favored by ducks and redwing blackbirds. The pole was placed there by NH Fish & Game to encourage osprey to nest here… but I’ve only seen it occupied once in 25+ years. Last week, as I rowed by, I saw a few dead sticks sitting atop the platform. Hey! That’s new. I paused. Sure enough, a few moments later, an osprey flapped by, carrying a stick, and added it to the growing pile. I rowed quickly home, grabbed my camera gear, and drove up the road where I could get a better view. Over the course of three mornings, I’ve enjoyed watching the two osprey as they build their nest. They don’t need to look far for materials – I’ve seen them flap over to a neighboring snag, grab a dead branch with their talons, snap it off, and bring it back. It is slow, methodical work! Check out the photo gallery, including a video.

Osprey building a nest, on River Road in Lyme NH.

From what Wikipedia says about osprey, it sounds like they may be here for another 10-15 weeks until the nest is built, eggs are laid, and chicks are fledged. Many more photos to come!

I also discovered the Osprey Watch website – I’ll check that out next week.

Spring snowstorm

Wet and sticky.

We’ve just concluded a spring snowstorm – in April. It was unusually large and long, lasting over 40 hours and dumping 3-6″ in our area… but possibly several feet at higher elevation. These spring storms can often bring the greatest snowfall because they result from the collision of warm, moist air arriving from the south, and cold, dry air from the north. They bring sticky, wet snow, which coats everything beautifully with fat snowflakes – but can also bring down trees and branches, causing power outages. We lost power this morning, and I went out to photograph the beauty; see the gallery!

Ski season

It has finally snowed – two or three good dumps of snow, over the past two weeks. Although it rained on the snow last week, it stayed cold all this week, so last week’s snow was compressed and hardened by the rain, and this week’s snow formed a wonderfully fluffy powder on top of that base. Today I had a chance to get out skiing, for the first time this season. A friend here in Lyme provides an incredible community service – he grooms several kilometers of trails for nordic skiing, classic style. These trails are a short drive from my house, and they wander through the farm fields and timber forests of central Lyme. I made a quick couple of loops in the lower fields this afternoon… just me and the breeze and a light falling snow. Deer tracks criss-crossed the field, and a barred owl soared silently over the meadow.

Skiing the groomed trails in the hayfields behind the farms of Lyme.

Wildlife camera – December

The core part of hunting season ended in early December, and the Lyme forest settled in for a long winter. Or so one might think; the weather has been so warm, and largely snowless, that it hardly seems like winter yet. I left two cameras deployed – one at the trail over the summit, as it has been since late October, and the other in two locations, first at a trail intersection and later at a vernal pool. December’s video includes many captures of deer, as you might expect. Most exciting was a short clip of two coyotes trotting over the summit just before midnight, in early December, and a bear scampering past the summit on Christmas Day. (Isn’t he supposed to be asleep for the winter?)

Black bear, heading away from the camera.

First snowfall

Winter is here?

At daybreak today we woke to our first proper snowfall – with an inch of fresh snow on the ground by 7am. We’d seen snow flurries once or twice in the past week, but now we can confidently say that fall has ended and we’re entering stick season. It appears raspberry season has ended, as well!

End of the sculling season

all good things…

I enjoy sculling (rowing) on the river, in the early mornings, from May through October. Prior to May, the water is too cold for to be out on the water alone; after October, the air is often too cold. (My personal threshold is forty degrees; rowing in 30-degree weather is far too chilly!) Darkness is also a factor this time of year… it’s too dark to see before 7am.

Some years, though, I manage to sneak in one or two more outings in the first days of November, when the weather holds and my calendar allows. This morning I enjoyed one final spin up the river, passing the few remaining ducks, geese, and other migrating birdlife. (On a recent outing, I saw four bald eagles!)

Time to wash and stow the shell until spring… and with snow flurries in the air three days ago, it’s time to dig out the snow-season equipment!

Wildlife camera – October

Fox, deer, bobcat, and more!

My two wildlife cameras spent another month in the yard, capturing some fun photos and video of critters who visit our property. Most of them were captured at night, using the cameras’ infrared illumination. Check out the gallery!

Perhaps the most fun video was the parade of animals that came by our patio to check out the spot where we’d accidentally dropped a pizza as it came out of the pizza oven! I also experimented with other locations.

You may want to take another look at September’s gallery, to which I’ve added some new content. Lots of critters came to browse for fallen apples under the apple tree: groundhog, possum, raccoon, porcupine, turkey, deer, fox. I was particularly excited to see a bobcat come by one night!

For November, I’ve placed the cameras in the forested hillside across the street – with landowner permission – and am hoping for some more action “in the wild!”

First frost

Finally!

It has been an incredibly warm fall – with temperatures hitting the 80s(!) in September and often in the 70s in October. Historically, local gardeners could never count on frost-free weather after Labor Day (first weekend in September)… though in recent years it was not uncommon to make it through September without a frost. This year, as recently as Saturday (75ºF and sunny) it was looking like we might get through October, too, without a frost.

Today, the last day of October – Halloween! – the first frost finally arrived, applying a crisp coating to the yard and the fallen leaves.

Below are plots of temperature in our garden, at head height, over the past week and over the past month.

For those not from around here, these are crazy warm temps for October!

Raspberry season!

A bountiful harvest.

Fall is here, and that leads to one of my favorite parts of the year: raspberry season. Pam’s garden has a highly productive raspberry patch, partly due to the unusually warm fall weather so far. (It is October 4th and we have yet to see a frost, or even come close!) I’m picking about a quart every day. Yum!

Apple season

Time for applesauce!

Fall has arrived, more or less – and that means it is apple season! We planted two apple trees in the backyard – one with McIntosh, one with Cortland apples. The Cortlands are heading for a bumper crop, and the deadfall have already been extremely attractive to all the local wildlife.

We spent a few minutes today, shaking the tree to encourage a few more apples to fall… and netted over 12 pounds of cored apples!

Cooked with some cranberries from the freezer, then spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and brown sugar, they soon became 5 quarts of cran-applesauce. Wow! We are set for the winter.