Outdoors – Page 12

Lyme wildlife – November part 2

So much to share this month!

November was a busy month in the forests of Lyme, New Hampshire… especially evident because I doubled the number of cameras in late October. Last week, I shared fun video of beavers captured next to one of their dams along a brook near home. Well, beavers weren’t the only visitors to this brook! Today I share two short videos: one showcasing the variety of other critters that follow the beaver’s trail, and the other highlighting animals that cross the brook further downstream.

In this first video, taken alongside a game trail the busy beavers created while dragging trees down to the stream, you’ll see a puzzled buck, a curious raccoon, a busy mouse, and… a special guest. Don’t miss the special guest! and read on for a second video.

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…

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.

Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS)
(cropped from the photo below)

Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) on 2024-10-18 at 1922 EDT
2.0 seconds at f/4, ISO 2500, cleaned with Lightroom Denoise

Mount Crawford in fall foliage

Absolutely spectacular!

It was still dark as I drove north through the dense valley fog, confident I would encounter a brilliant sunny day once I turned east and climbed away from the Connecticut River Valley. My destination was Mount Crawford, a popular peak in the heart of the White Mountains. At 3,128′ it is not one of the 48 ‘high peaks’, the four-thousand-footers that inspire so many people to “bag them all” and earn the AMC’s Four-Thousand-Footer patch. (And for some, like me, to do them all more than once; I finished my second round in August.) But, frankly, Mount Crawford is far better than many of its higher cousins: it has a splendid view – earning it a spot on the list of 52 with a view. Today, in full fall foliage, the view was absolutely stupendous. Read on!

View of Mount Washington and the southern Presidential Range,
along the Davis Path to Mount Crawford.

Lunar eclipse

Partial eclipse of a harvest ‘supermoon’.

Last night we arrived home from almost three weeks of international travel just minutes before the beginning of a lunar ‘supermoon’ eclipse. The cloudless sky was dark and the moon had just risen over the hill to our east, bright and full. I quickly reconfigured my camera from our travels through sunny Japanese gardens into settings suitable for photographing the full moon, and captured a few shots as the partial eclipse began, and then peaked at 10:44 EDT. Below is a photo during peak, when the top of the moon was darkened by earth’s shadow.

Canon R5 with 100-500mm lens + 1.4xTC, at 700mm, 1/100 at f/10, ISO 125. Cropped.

It was a calm, cool evening, and I stood in the driveway for about twenty minutes enjoying the growing eclipse. While I watched, I listened to the local coyote family howling at the moon, somewhere on the far side of the hill. Closer at hand, in the shadows to my south, I heard the alarm call of a white-tailed deer: a high-pitched snort while leaping away from an imagined predator. Meanwhile my cat, Sebastian, wove his way lazily around my ankles, equally happy to be spending an evening in the moonlight.

See the gallery of three photos – at full resolution, you can see even more detail.

Lyme wildlife – a walk in the forest

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!