Outdoors – Page 17

Wildlife camera – February

New cameras and exciting footage!

As you may recall from my prior blog post, I purchased and deployed two more wildlife cameras, allowing me to explore several interesting locations simultaneously. I quickly captured some exciting video of a fisher, a small but fearsome predator I’ve never truly seen in the wild. The new cameras were blurry, and flaky; after numerous iterations with tech support they sent me two new cameras. So I have lots of video to share this month! Check out this new video of the fisher, nice and clear. Later, watch the deer sniff my camera.
Read on, though, for the most exciting video!

Wildlife camera – January

Deer, fox, coyote, and fisher!

Winter has been fickle this year – bringing us some good snowfalls, but also tremendously warm weather and bare ground. I expanded my set of wildlife cameras from two to four, and explored several new locations in the forest near my home. Check out the video! I caught many videos of white-tailed deer, including an interesting behavior: food is scarce for them in winter, so they browse on the thin branches of hemlock trees. I placed a camera next to a fresh fallen hemlock, surrounded by deer tracks, indicating they come often to nibble.

I also caught two red fox running by on a brilliant sunny day and a glimpse of a coyote trotting by in the middle of the night. Most exciting, though, was the fisher, a well-known local animal I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen. “The fisher (Pekania pennanti) is a carnivorous mammal native to North America, a forest-dwelling creature whose range covers much of the boreal forest in Canada to the northern United States. … It is sometimes referred to as a fisher cat, although it is not a cat.” [Wikipedia] Indeed, Wikipedia’s image of the fisher in its winter coat is a dead ringer for what we see in my video:

By http://www.ForestWander.com, CC BY-SA 3.0 us, Link

Unfortunately, my fisher video came from one of the two new cameras, which seem to be perpetually out of focus. I’ve tried numerous tests and fixes, and communicated with tech support, to no avail. They are sending replacement cameras, so I hope February will bring me more clear video!

Moosilauke rime

A beautiful day on a favorite peak.

Moosilauke is my favorite mountain, and I visit often. Nonetheless, it had been nearly a year since my last visit – far longer than my usual time away – and I was itching to get back up there. Today’s weather forecast promised moderate temperatures and clear skies – and I knew from recent weather that these popular trails should be well packed from the storms two and three weeks ago. Although I got a late start (hitting the trail at 11am), it turned out to be a fantastic day to be in the mountains. Read on!

David at the summit sign for Mount Moosilauke.

Sunday Cube

Mount Cube with a dusting of snow.

It has been a warm week, complete with rain, sleet, and drizzle. Bleah – much of the beautiful snow we had last week has compacted, and the frozen ponds and rivers are looking rather soft. Nonetheless I was eager to get out on the trail, so I headed for an old standby, Mount Cube. The sky was cloudy but I was rewarded with views both close and distant. Read on!

Wright’s Mountain

A gem of the upper valley.

After another week of snow and cold weather – that allowed the snow to remain soft and powdery – it was time to get out on the trail again. Some friends suggested Wright’s Mountain, outside Bradford VT. It has a lovely network of trails, maintained by local volunteers. It’s not a tall mountain, nor are its trails long, but on a single-digit kind of day it makes for a nice morning outing.

View from summit of Wright Mountain, Vermont.

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.

SC wildlife – December

I was back in South Carolina for the Christmas holiday and had a chance to explore some of the wildlife around Kiawah Island and Magnolia Plantation, both near Charleston. The gallery shows some of my favorite photos from that week… deer, ducks, alligators, herons, and seagulls. I especially enjoyed watching a pair of blue herons going about the construction of their nest. They seemed to be taking their time, slowly building it one tiny stick at a time.

Blue herons building a nest, Magnolia Gardens, South Carolina.

Top 12 photos of 2023

It’s hard to pick just twelve.

I enjoyed photography in 2023 and decided to share my pick of favorites. It was not easy! 12 photos for 12 months – not one per month, but just the twelve that I felt were especially beautiful or interesting. See the full gallery – where I recommend clicking the “play” button to see them as a slideshow – and read on for some commentary about each one.

Mount Peg

Early winter hike in late-fall conditions.

It was a busy week, and I was eager to get outside. So when some friends suggested a short hike on Saturday – and the forecast looked sunny – I jumped at the chance. We decided to try the diminutive Mount Peg, which is a grassy hilltop just a short walk from the side streets of Woodstock, Vermont. I had never been there, and it took us a while to find the right trailhead. It turns out that the slopes of Mount Peg has a vast network of trails, twisting around and interconnecting (it seemed) every hundred meters. On its south side, the trail network grows even larger and (this time of year) becomes a nordic ski center. Indeed, the first trailhead we located was for skiers, and there were a few skiers braving the warm temperatures and mushy snow on this sunny morning.

Karen and Dave on the Summit of Mount Peg – a small hill outside Woodstock VT.

We relocated to one of the hiker’s trailheads and headed up into snowless forest. One kilometer later we popped out onto the grassy slopes of the summit, where a thin layer of crusty old snow persisted despite heavy foot traffic. A large, multigenerational family bustled by us at one point, as did a lone, lycra-clad jogger. These trails are popular for both the locals and the tourists, they being easily reached from the downtown hotels and the quiet neighborhoods nearby. We went down by a slightly different route, one of the benefits of a mountain with so many trails!

Route to/from Summit of Mount Peg – a small hill outside Woodstock VT.

Hike stats:
Distance: 2.1km
Time: 0h56m
Gain: 88m