Outdoor Adventures with Gary Lee - Vol. 127

The swamps are full already, you can shut off the rain anytime and it looks like we might see some white stuff this week on Wednesday. I picked a rose yesterday and there are five more buds, but the hose froze one day this week and I had to put water on them from inside the house. This week might be the end for them. I have never had roses bloom this late and I put in some of the toad lilies, which had some blooms on them also. There were some foxgloves blooming by a camp over at Limekiln Lake this week. Next week, I may have some snow snakes to photograph.

I did see my first Snow Bunting in Limekiln Campsite this week, as a Loon was still calling out on the lake and a flock of Robins were feeding on bear berries along the shoreline. The Blue Jays were working the beech nuts everywhere I went that day and were upset that I was even there. A single Hooded Merganser male was fishing off the campsite beach and a couple Mallards were feeding along the shoreline by the outlet.

There is still a pair of fully grown Loon chicks on Sixth Lake which I checked on yesterday. I only saw one, but others had seen both of them earlier in the day. There was a pair of Mallards in the bay there also. Seventh Lake was an ocean of white caps, and it was a cold wind blowing out of the northeast.

I pulled my owl nets before they got wet again. I caught a total of seven, as I only missed getting one on two nights. I missed the main flights that got through earlier in the month. I had speaker problems, but Amy Sauer solved that and then I got my own new speaker which worked fine; thanks Amy.

I have been moving some lumber on my canoe cart and the tires were a tad soft, so I went into the back seat of my truck to get my portable air compressor, but it was gone. Someone stole it from my truck somewhere I had been parked and not locked my new truck. I am too trusting I guess, just glad they didn’t take my $650 dollar binoculars that were just a reach away. I hope you enjoy it and someday you will get caught stealing something else, as you are a thief!

Big game hunters had a wet weekend to start the season and it's not much better this weekend, so the deer are getting a break, as there are plenty of beech nuts to eat. Back in 1995, as found in my diary from that year, we had several inches of rain and high winds in a storm the opening day of big game season October 21, which washed out many of the culverts in the Plains, trapping many hunters beyond them. Governor Brook Hill and Hardhack Hill both washed out, making them impassable. I was beyond them trying to save some road and I had to go out the Cedar River Gate to get home that night. We lost the Falls Pond culvert and a couple other culverts beyond Otter Brook, where several of the hunters with vehicles were trapped. I flew into Little Indian Lake with Don Bird the next day to let hunters know they couldn’t get out and it would probably be a week before they could get their vehicles out. If they wanted to fly out, they could go to Squaw Lake and Don Bird could fly them out. I walked the road back to Falls Pond Outlet, leaving notes on vehicles and talking to trapped campers as to what was going to happen. Some of the hunters told me to call their boss and tell them they wouldn’t be coming to work for a while. I flew out from Squaw Lake that night with Tom Massett and a friend who had gotten my message. I remember Don Bird getting the float plane as far into the west end of Squaw as he could with the load he had on to get us all out that night at sunset. It was about a week before the road was repaired and hunters could get in and out of the Plains.

The beech even lost many of their leaves with all the wind and rain we’ve had. The Tamaracks are showing their fall colors of yellow, but it won’t be long, and they will be bare for the winter. They are our only local evergreen that loses its color during the winter. They are covered with cones, which are some of the earliest to ripen and are a favorite seed of the chickadees and nuthatches which feed on them this time of the year. That’s why you don’t have many birds at your feeders, as there is much wild food out there for these birds. The first snows should push some of the half hearty birds to your feeders as it will cover some of their food sources.

The first day of Project Feeder Watch is Saturday November 11, but that’s another story. See ya.

Photo above: Rose in bloom November 1st

Larch by the pond