Outdoor Adventures with Gary Lee - Vol. 330

We got some much-needed rain during the week. I had an inch and a half in my gauge and my sister Wendy had four inches in Cliffton Park. There were some small forest fires in the area before the rain came, one on the big island in Limekiln Lake caused by an unquenched campfire, another on an island in Raquette Lake. There was one on Bear Lake an interior body of water in the Town of Morehouse, Hamilton County. They flew in firefighting equipment with a helicopter to that one where the crew stayed overnight to extinguish it.

There is one Hurricane Humberto in the Atlantic and one Tropical Storm Imelda which are not going to hit the coast but will cause heavy seas, rip currents, and flooding rains along the shoreline of the east coast all the way to Maine.

The leaves were at peak over the weekend and so were the crowds to see them. Every parking lot to trailheads were full of cars and the nice weather kept visitors out and about everywhere. Cameras were clicking everywhere and I even got a few nice shots. Blink and you missed it as the rains, and wind put many of those pretty leaves on the ground.

My grandson Nathan was up for the weekend from college in Utica. He went out with Amy Sauer, and I on Friday afternoon while we searched for the female Loon on Eighth Lake that was having trouble after having a fishing line attached for over a week that I mention last week. We did attempt to catch her one night and while the team was out, they found one of the chicks with fishing line. They caught it and brought it to shore where the line was cut off, it was banded, blood and feathers taken, given fluids and antibiotics and released. They couldn’t catch the female with the line that night. This Loon was beaching during the week, and she had lost the lure but still had a hook inside. We tried to catch her, and I had her part way in my net as she was hiding under some brush along the shoreline, but she escaped as I couldn’t get the net up. She seemed better a couple of days later and wouldn’t hold or go to shore so we were out checking on her but didn’t find her this day. The male and smaller chick were right off the beach feeding. The adult got a couple small minnows which the chick put down and then he caught a small bass which the chick had to struggle with but got it down as Nathan was photographing. We saw the other bigger banded chick feeding on its own. There were two Cormorants sunning themselves on rocks by the island and a Belted Kingfisher feeding along the shoreline. The sun went under a big black cloud that dropped big fat rain drops on us and then it popped out and made a nice rainbow right on the surface of the lake from us to shore. There were many pretty leaves blown along the north end shoreline mixed in some pealed beave sticks which made for some nice photos.

Nathan went over Saturday morning to the Thendara Train Station to take photos as some of his friends had taken the train up from Utica on the way to Tupper Lake. One of his friends is a train buff. Nathan got shots as it was crossing the bridge over Route 28. He saw another friend who was going to the Big Moose Station to get shots there.

When he got back, we went up to Raquette Lake to pick up a Mallard Duck which had a broken lower bill that Forest Ranger Gary Miller caught. We stopped on the way home via Uncas Road to take photos and start a car by the upper pond with a dead battery. The duck was picked up and then transported to a rehabber in Chadwicks via Russ Haynes and family.

We went out Sunday morning looking for some nice leaf shots in the Moose River Area and maybe even a moose. We saw tracks but no moose. We found some beautiful, fringed gentians in full bloom where I had put in seeds years ago and they had spread. We also saw and photographed brilliant red maples in full Autumn splendor. We found a twenty-foot-tall white oak tree that I planted as a nut several years ago.

Enjoy this fall weather and be careful with any outside fires as down leaves dry fast but that’s another story. See ya.

Photo above: Loons with fish by Nathan Lee