Why Some People Should Not be Allowed to Own Cameras

The heron looks right.

The heron looks left.

The heron ponders the meaning of "ice-out".

As you regular readers know, this past Summer I purchased a gee-whiz, big zoom (18x), point and shoot camera with the intention of becoming Americas next great wildlife photographer.  Sort of a later day Thoreau.   Then again Thoreau didn't take pictures; he just sat around in the woods but let's leave that aside for the time being.  Anyway, I've tried to become a decent photographer but with little success.  In fairness to myself I have to say that the animals are really difficult models, never sitting still, showing up at odd hours, striking bizarre poses and often lurking just out of camera range.  If the animals were fashion models, they'd be out of work.  (Or maybe not.  My description sounds a lot like a fashion model now that I think about it.)  Today was another example of the frustrations I've faced in my quest for wildlife photography stardom.  Late this afternoon a beautiful Great Blue Heron swooped into the yard and settled on the banks of the pond.  There are two or three feet of open water along the near bank, and he immediately set up his still life fishing vigil while I scrambled to get the camera set up.  The photos above are the result. (If you click on a photo it will enlarge and you can actually see the heron among the bush stalks.)   I never did see if he caught any fish.  We've seen some of the minnows stirring in the shallows lately, so there were fish to be had.   Despite the challenges I've faced getting good wildlife photos, I'm going to stick with it.  After all, I've pretty much mastered just sitting in the woods and relish mastering this new skill.   As long as it doesn't interfere with lunch that is.  

Spring is here; Ice-out is near

Some die-hard ice goblins cling tenaciously to the banks of the brook.

The Father of Waters flows untroubled to the sea.  (O.K., maybe not the Father of Waters but at least a 4th cousin twice removed, and my apologies to Lincoln.)

Still some serious snow pack on the far side of the river.

No ice-out on the pond yet.

The glacier blocking the front door as it appeared two weeks ago.

There's a small community north of us called Joe's Pond and every year it runs an "ice-out" contest.  The point is to guess when a cinder block placed in the middle of Joe's Pond will fall through the ice as the Spring thaw warms things up.  If you're interested in buying tickets you have until 1 April to do so.  You can go to the Joe's Pond website at http://joespondvermont.com for all the information you might need.  Of course we have a little "ice-out" process here at the house as well although I haven't started putting cinder blocks out on the pond yet.  We'd love to see some open water on the pond and start feeding the fish of course, but our real ice-out event will be when the glacier in front of the front door has melted.  Right now it feels like a short hike in Greenland's back country any time you try and walk to the front door.  I'm guessing that the front path will be clear by 30 April and that all vestiges of snow and ice on the that side of the house will have melted by 15 May.  Things could go faster if we keep having crazy hot weather like we've been having.  I mean, it got up to 42 F (5 Celsius) today and at night the temperatures are only going down to about 15 F (-9 Celsius) or so.  With intense heat like that the ice doesn't stand a chance.   

Minnie the Mink's Marks

Not marks really but tracks.  The melting slushy snow provided a perfect medium for capturing Minnie the Mink's tracks on the path that leads off of our property and up the hill into the woods.  The snow also makes the tracks bigger than they would otherwise be, but their shape is clearly delineated.

The Birds go crazy for a Sharped-Shinned Hawk

Harry the "sharped-shinned" hawk.

For some reason whenever I hear the name "sharp-shinned hawk" I am reminded of the old ZZ Top song "A Sharp Dressed Man".    I have no inkling why but today when a sharp-shinned hawk alighted atop one of our bird feeders, that song started playing incessantly through my brain.  Then I started to say 'sharp-shinned' as fast as I could over and over again.  I gotta tell ya, the days are pretty intense up here in Vermont.  Sometimes I have to take a nap just to be able to handle the excitement.  Now about that hawk.  No one really knows why they are called "sharp-shinned" although one theory holds that when these hawks wear pants, they like them with a really sharp crease.  Sharp-shinned hawks prey primarily on other birds which may be why our usual feathered visitors found today to be the perfect time to visit other feeders in our area.  I had seen Harry the hawk earlier in the week down by the river but was particularly pleased when he showed up by the house and let me snap this photo.  He didn't hang out around the deck for long (all of the other birds being gone and all), but we hope to see him regularly as the year progresses.  As long as he doesn't take a liking to the chickens that is...    

Not Super-Sized M&Ms

The moose in our area have been pretty active right around the house recently.  I snapped a picture of a little pile of calling cards one of them left on his/her way through the yard the other day.  I suspect it's the same yearling calf I was able to photograph this Summer.  I say that because these droppings are only about a third of the size of a golf ball.  A full grown moose leaves droppings as big as a horse.  Although the dogs found the moose nuggets to be quite tasty, I don't recommend them for human consumption.  

Minnie the Mink Makes a Move

Minnie's stunt double crossing the river in a scene from her soon to be released movie.

Minnie too is wondering when all of the snow will be gone.

The weather has been so nice lately that I have resumed having my late morning coffee out on the deck, if it's not raining that is.  Sure there's still lots of snow left on the ground, about 24" (60 cm), but with temperatures in the high 40s F (5 C) during the day, it's starting to feel (dare I say it?) a lot like Spring.  So anyway, this morning I'm out enjoying the warm weather, sunshine and my coffee when who should appear out of the pond's drainpipe but Minnie the Mink.  She started to scamper across the ice along the far bank and then realized that the dogs and I were intently watching her from the deck.  By the time I rushed inside and got the camera, she had disappeared back into the pond's drainage culvert.  After a few minutes I saw her reappear near the river, swim across and start exploring.  She sniffed and searched busily along a 200 meter arc on the far side of our property before disappearing from view.  Unfortunately she was too far for me to get a shot with the camera.  Although some minks do turn white in the Winter, Minnie is black.  The white and the black minks are the same species.  They're excellent hunters and fishers, and I'm sure Minnie appreciates us stocking the pond with all of those plump trout.  She's going to be really excited about the chickens we're getting this Spring/Summer.  Mink's apparently are extraordinarily gifted at getting into chicken coops and raising hell.  Think of all of those eggs to eat, topped off with the occasional chicken dinner!   Of course, I'm the one responsible for designing and building the mink-proof, fox-proof, coon-proof chicken coop.  But hey, no pressure.  As we keep telling ourselves, they're just chickens.

A Perfect Late Winter's Day

Moose tracks in deep snow up on the trail.

The view from up here on a perfect Winter day.

Thursday turned out to be the sort of Winter's day that seems to make all of the snow and cold weather and crappy driving conditions worthwhile.  Particularly if you're retired and can get outside for some relaxed snowshoeing.  If you have to work, well maybe not so much.  But anyway, the day dawned sunny and mild and stayed that way all day.  When I say mild I mean the mid 20s F (-5 or so Celsius).   There was no wind and a full sun so it felt like it was a lot warmer.  The dogs and I took a long walk up through the woods, enjoying the balmy weather and checking out any new tracks or other signs of animal activity.  Some fresh moose tracks followed the trail for some distance and there were other mysterious scents that the dogs thoroughly investigated.  Other than that there was nothing of note really, just the feeling that Winter may be on its last legs and Spring may actually appear sometime in the next few weeks or months.  In that same vein, on Groundhog day back in early February everyone in the region was encouraged when the groundhog apparently saw his shadow.  There was dancing in the streets when people got the word that there would be only 6 more weeks (as opposed to the usual 6 more months) of Winter.  Our current weather is keeping that hope alive.  At this rate we may get to plant the garden before July.  Who says global warming is all bad?

Up a Tree With No Place to Go

Well I'm back from a stint of work in Burkina-Faso, West Africa as of Saturday and slowly adjusting to the 80 to 90 degree daytime temperature differential.  It's about 20 F (-10 C) here during the day and it was between 105 F to 110 F (45 C) where I was working.  When we would get back to the hotel after a day of working outside in that heat, our 80 F hotel rooms seemed like heaven.  I would have liked it even cooler in my room but 80 F was about all the air conditioner could manage.  As part of my readjustment to the somewhat cooler climate of our fair Green Mountain state, I took the dogs for a walk up through the woods this morning, shivering all the way and trying to readjust to walking with snowshoes.  It would have been a pretty uneventful short hike except that on the way back Nella started frantically running around a pretty good sized white pine tree and barking excitedly.  She never barks when she trees squirrels so I went over to investigate.  And there was Pauly the Porcupine about 25 feet up the tree and ambling out on what looked like a pretty fragile limb as he tried to put a little distance between himself and Nella.  Imagining what would happen if the branch broke and the two dogs jumped Pauly, and having no desire to spend the rest of the morning pulling dozens of porcupine quills out of the dogs' snouts, I quickly called Nella and hustled the reluctant dogs back onto the path towards home.  As usual when something interesting happens up in the woods, I didn't have the camera, so I missed getting Pauly's mug shot.  Nonetheless, I've posted a picture that should let you readers imagine the high drama that the dogs and I lived through this morning.  The porcupine in the picture seems somewhat smaller than Pauly who is a pretty good sized animal.  Also it was snowing this morning, so you'll have to imagine snow falling around the porcupine in the picture to get the full effect of our few moments of terror.  O.K., maybe not terror but at least mild concern.