In my continuing effort to re-visit some of New Hampshire’s tallest peaks – those 48 peaks over four thousand feet – I joined two friends today to walk the forested range on the west side of Crawford Notch: Mounts Willey, Field, and Tom. This threesome offers a steep climb, a pleasant up-and-down ridge walk, and a few spectacular views to the east (the southern Presidential Range, including Mount Washington), to the west (the Pemigewasset Wilderness), and to the south (Mount Carrigain and the peaks along the Kancamagus Highway). Check out the photo gallery, and read on!
View of Mount Washington and the Presidential Range, with Crawford Notch and Webster Cliff in the foreground, from Mount Willey – NH.Continue reading “Willey, Field, and Tom”
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.
Every year I am always a bit disappointed when winter-hiking season comes to an end, wishing I’d managed to find more opportunities to get out. But then, summer hiking season begins and it’s always exciting to see again just how beautiful the White Mountains can be in summer. This weekend – Memorial Day weekend – is sort of the unofficial start of summer for hiking, biking, boating, and more. So I set out to find a peak to climb: something I’d not visited in a long while, and hopefully not attracting hordes of Memorial Day tourists. I settled on Mount Moriah, in the Carter-Moriah range just across the valley from the Presidential Range. The last time I’d been over this peak was (gasp) the fall of 1983, nearly forty-one years earlier. Today, I took a different route and experienced one of the most beautiful trails of the Whites. Read on!
A couple months ago I circumnavigated the forest property where I keep my wildlife cameras, re-discovering a steep ledgy hillside that I’d seen a few years earlier. The landowner had told me that this area was “bear country”; seeing these granite outcrops, with their many dark nooks and crannies, and jagged fallen boulders, made me understand why. This rugged terrain, with plenty of surrounding forest and nearby sources of water, virtually cried out to as home for bear, coyote, and bobcat. So at the end of April I brought two of my cameras over to that side of the hill. I found a promising game trail and strapped my camera to a tree. Little did I know what would come by, only hours later! Read on to find out.
April was a month of transition for my local patch of forest, here in Lyme New Hampshire. Although we had a big snowstorm early in the month, all of the interesting wildlife videos I have to share this month show the bare ground and leafless branches of early spring. In this month’s video highlights, you’ll see a familiar cast of characters – turkey, deer, raccoon, porcupine, skunk, and even a busy little mouse. I caught the raccoon red-handed (twice!) inspecting that hole in the tree – highlighted in a recent post – but as far as I can tell, the hole is still unoccupied.
The raccoon climbed the tree and inspected the nesting hole.
Perhaps most excitingly, the big black bear is back – last seen on Christmas Day – and now has two little cubs in tow! The appearance of this bear family reminded me of a comment made by a local – that the other side of the hill is “bear country” – so I moved a couple cameras over there. Two weeks later: Wow! I got more than I expected. I’ll share that experience soon. (Subscribe, so you won’t miss it!)
I took an extended walk through my backyard patch of forest, today, roaming over the hills and through the empty forests. The snow has disappeared, exposing dry, brown leaves from the fall, a litter of twigs and branches snapped from the trees by the winter’s wind and snow. Here and there, though, the colors of Spring have begun to appear.
red trillium (not a great photo, you can see only two of three petals!)bloodrootA steep, rocky outcrop with a carpet of green emerging…
Back in February I noticed some tracks and signs in the snow beneath a big ol’ tree. Looking up, I could see a big hole in the tree, about 25′ up; it sure looked like a nice place to build a nest. So I set up two cameras there: one at the base of the tree – which has led to some pretty cool videos of fisher, coyote, bobcat, and more – and another high in a neighboring tree so I could record any activity in that high-up hole. The picture below is the view from that camera. I’ve gotten a lot of video from that camera, but all of it was simply from the wind blowing the trees back and forth. Until now! Read on.
March was unusually warm – and my patch of woods lost all their snow even before the month began. But snow fell again, at least twice, and so my wildlife videos include some scenes with snow, and some without. Two new critters appear this month for the first time – a tiny (but very busy!) mouse, and a chipmunk. (Both on the same log! I share only a little video of each.)
This month’s video (less than four minutes) ends in a cliffhanger: does the fox crawl into the skunk’s burrow? and if so, what happened next?
Wildlife camera captures from March 2024, in the forests of Lyme NH.
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!
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!
David Kotz 