Outdoor Adventures with Gary Lee - Vol. 346
Winter sure has got a grip on the north country x-country skiers, downhill skiers and snowmobilers are having a ball. People with frozen pipes and driveways to clear are not so happy. I hear the Town of Webb Highway Department going out at four AM every morning for the last couple of weeks. I just hope their equipment holds up to all this wear and tear. Here there have been a few snowmobile accidents back in the woods and people have been rescued and brought out to ambulances, and one to a helicopter ride to Utica.
The high temperature this week looks like nine degrees on Thursday with several below zero temperatures overnight. Lakes affect snow coming as the winds blow off the open lakes of Erie and Ontario. So far, we haven’t gotten any big dumps here, but other places have gotten over two feet at a time. Looking at photos taken out west, some areas in the mountains are still bare of any snow. Ski races scheduled for areas out there have been moved east and some to Lake Placid.
I’ve been watching lots of football playoffs and I will miss seeing the NFL Super Bowl as I will be at a Yurt Camp out in the middle of Yellowstone Park and I don’t think there will be a TV there. I might be listening to a pack of wolves howling outside in the night air which would be great. Just this week a female cougar collard in 2016 with three of this year’s young were filmed feeding on an elk carcass close to one of the roads. Wouldn’t that be neat to see? I saw them in an enclosure in Arizona and just missed seeing one in the wild in the Rocky Mountain National Park while photographing elk. Just after a beautiful herd of elk came by us on the trail a lady alone came down the trail. She had just seen a cougar not far up the trail which is why that herd of elk had come by us in such a hurry. She had gotten up on a big rock as the cougar just walked by her, quite an experience luckily it must not have been hungry.
This will be my third trip to Yellowstone Park as I was on the Forest Fires there in 1988 for two weeks just before the area blew up and burned much of the park as the fires merged. Going back two years ago with my son and his family was great as it was lush, green and there was no smoke. We saw lots of neat springs, hundreds of Bison crossing the roads, some moose before coming in the north gate, black bears foraging along the highway, Grizzly bears feeding in the meadows, one with two cubs, herds of elk and mountain goats. We saw and heard several western birds along the highways and on trails we hiked during the week there. We missed seeing wolves by a whisker as people had walked into the area they had been seen. We saw big horned sheep in the Bad Lands of North Dakota but not in Yellowstone. There is always something new to see and possibly photograph.
At Eight Acre Wood the Turkey flock has gone down from eight to five coming daily during this last cold spell. They only pick up the dropped seed from the feeders as I don’t put out corn for them as the Deer would just come through and gobble it up.
I have been feeding the big flock of nearly two hundred Mallards, a few Black Ducks and a couple Black-Mallard cross in the Inlet Channel daily. That many ducks can eat a lot of corn in a short time. This week in waterfowl count week here in New York. With all this freezing weather there isn’t much open water anywhere else. I did get a Belted Kingfisher over the open water of the channel also. That bird or another bird has been there for several years getting enough to eat.
Should have results of the duck count in Region Five this week but that’s another story. See ya.
Photo above: Feeding Ducks Inlet
