A return visit to a beautiful place!
I was delighted to again have the opportunity to spend a week in Aspen, Colorado, at a small workshop hosted by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (AAA&S) for leaders in higher education. It was a fascinating workshop, this year – as you might imagine, given the impact of federal actions may have on the future of higher education in this country – but in this blog I will focus on my outdoor activities while in Aspen. Read on!
Local wildlife remains busy, throughout the winter.
I’ve been pleased by the overwhelming response to my “Best of 2024” summary video, which seems to have brought enjoyment to many an armchair wildlife fan. Thanks for sharing your feedback! I enjoy sharing the videos from my wildlife camera, and I enjoy even more the opportunity to spend time in the outdoors, off trail, wandering through a local forest with an eye and ear tuned to the signs and sounds of nature. Read on to see January’s new videos!
Favorite photos and videos.
Wow, 2024 was quite the year. With a dozen or more hikes in New Hampshire, and travels to Finland, Estonia, Iceland, Switzerland, Japan, Korea, California, South Carolina, and India, I had many opportunities for photography. Check out some of my favorite photos!
This year I dug deeper into wildlife photography by expanding my network of camera traps (wildlife cameras) in a forest near home. Click on the image below for a compendium of my favorite clips! It is 14 minutes long – I know, in the era of TikTok that may seem interminable, but I encourage you to sit back and enjoy the wildlife at its own pace. You’ll see black bear, beaver, bobcat, coyote, deer, fisher, red fox, goose, groundhog, owl, raccoon, skunk, flying squirrel, and turkey.
For all my wildlife-camera videos, visit this tag.
P.S. PetaPixel posted its own “best trail camera photos of 2024”. Exotic!
Still cameras: this year I upgraded from the Canon R5 to the Canon R5 Mark II; I use several lenses for most photos: 24-105mm, 100-500mm, and (recently) 200-800mm. Some of my favorites also come from my iPhone 14 Pro.
Wildlife cameras: I started off with a pair of cameras from Punvoe, which produced most of the video on this site; more recently I’ve bought some Rigdoo; they are very similar (the internal firmware is clearly almost identical) but with a better camera (4K) and (supposedly) a faster reaction time and less-obtrusive night-vision light.
Bobcats, beavers, coyotes, and more!
The month of December brought snow… then melt… then snow… then melt. The wildlife in my little area of Lyme’s forest were busy… the deer were seeking food among the remnants of summer’s bounty, the squirrels were looking for long-lost acorns, the beavers were rebuilding one section of their dam only to find other sections breached in late-December rains. The foxes, coyotes, and bobcats were on the prowl, hoping to capture one of the above. Check out this month’s video for more! Sit back and relax for just six minutes.
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…
I first spotted the beaver by his wake – gliding smoothly out from shore, just downstream of the dock. I placed my rowing shell gently into the water, keeping one eye on my busy downstream neighbor. He arched his back, slapped his tail loudly, and dove… only to emerge a few seconds later, a few meters away. I sat still, and watched. He looked at me. I looked at him. He paddled along, zig-zagging upstream ever closer to me, clearly curious to see who (or what) I was, and what I might be up to. My fingers itched for my smartphone – only 10 meters away, on shore where I’d left it – but to stand up and fetch it, I knew, would spoil the moment. The beaver swam ever closer, his eyes on me every moment.
Eventually – for the moment seemed to last, though it was surely only one or two minutes – he pulled alongside the dock, keeping a safe distance of five meters, watching me from the side as he paddled strongly upstream.
Then a sudden SLAP and he dove again. The moment was gone; I readied my shell to row, and he resumed his course across the river.
It’s moments like these when I wish I had a camera, or even a smartphone. No such luck today! The photo above is from a sequence I shot in 2017.
Today’s beaver may have been the same fellow whose photo I shared in April:
Time to get out on the river!
With the warm weather this weekend, it’s finally time to get back onto the river. I pulled out the kayak and headed downriver to the mouth of Hewes Brook. On a tiny island, inches above the level of the river, I found a Canada Goose guarding her nest.
Shortly downriver, another goose hesitated until I was near, then launched out of the water and into the air.
On that island, a bit bigger, is a beaver lodge dating back several years.
Is it still occupied? I’ll check again another day.
See the full-resolution gallery for more/better pictures.
New arrivals and old friends.
A stroll along River Road, just upstream, brought me an opportunity to see some of the local regulars as well as some unusual migrants – all at the mouth of Grant Brook. Although the winter’s ice has just begun to recede, the critters moved in quickly. We saw some green-headed Mallard ducks, but also a pair of Mallards with vibrant blue heads:
Meanwhile, a beaver zipped by, then dove.
See the full gallery for more photos of both.
Our annual canoe trip on the Connecticut River – this year, we reach Bellows Falls.
Every year we paddle a little further down the Connecticut River. Five years ago we started at its source, on the border with Canada, and two years ago we reached our home in Lyme NH. Not satisfied, we decided to keep going! This year we paddled from Wilgus State Park (near Ascutney, VT) to Bellows Falls VT. Although a short trip – two short days with a beautiful sunny Saturday in the middle – it was a lovely trip. We camped riverside the first night, arriving after sunset and “making do” with a less-than-ideal location. The second night we stayed at Lower Meadows campsite, a pretty location on a spit next to Meary’s Cove and the lake formed by the dam at Bellows Falls. Continue reading “Connecticut River canoe trip”
David Kotz 