March Storm

March 3, 2012: And I thought the ice would melt soon....
There were tracks of two large "coyotes" crossing the yard this morning. 

Hilltown Winter

Outside my Bedroom Window

February 27th 2012:  The sun catches the hill opposite my bedroom window, across the frozen lake.  Soon the ice will melt and neighbors will lose their seasonal shortcut.

The Eagle will return.

A few people  saw the tracks of a "Big Cat," close to area cottages.

My trail camera batteries don't hold up to temperatures below 25 degrees, so I don't have any winter photos.

Hilltown Weather Keeping Us Indoors

Ice Storm

Hilltown weather..
Mud encased by ice
Covered with slush
Puddles, over slush,  on top of ice
Encasing mud. 
Framed by silver branches bent
By the weight of winter

                                                    Alma

A cardinal crunching, fog lifting, hot chocolate

Reading and painting all day - not so bad. (dish for tv not working, no tennis today)

                                    Mary Jo

Hilltown blue
Feeling bent 
Like the yew,
covered in ice
That's my view
Nothing spent, 
nothing new
Time feels lent
How about you?

Carol

The Bald Eagle

Bald Eagle outside my Window

At 8 am we spotted this mature eagle outside our bedroom window. I was able to grab one quick photo before our movement behind the curtain spooked him.

Deer Hunting Season is Over!

A nice Doe living in the Woods..and tracks indicating several more. Well done.

Passing Through

Last year a buck with 6 points appeared on the trail camera; this year a larger buck... 10 points! came through. Wonder if it is the same animal? Impossible for me to tell.  Himself tells me that I am not the only one who knows this handsome Buck is in our neighborhood. During Deer Hunting Season a neighbor "bagged" an 8 point buck. Perhaps this fine fellow escaped deeper into the woods, and survives.

A Bloggers Mistake...

The two does and their three fawns have been chased  deeper into the hills by Bow Hunters.  The camera has only "trapped"  a porcupine and a raccoon in the past week or so.

Bloggers Mistake:
I do hope the deer have found a safe haven..and remain safe during the next month...as more hunters take to the woods with their rifles.

Have I inadvertently put these lovely deer in harms way by posting their photos?  Will hunters find them in the nearby woods?

The Duplex (see "Woodland Duplex post)  in the Woods brings to mind Thornton Burgess, who used his  outdoor observations in nature as plots for his Mother Westwind stories.

In his first book, Old Mother West Wind, published in 1910, all of the characters were introduced...including Peter Rabbit, Jimmy Skunk, Sammy Jay, Bobby Raccoon, Little Joe Otter, Grandfather Frog, Billy Mink, Jerry Muskrat, Spotty the Turtle, Old Mother West Wind and her Merry Little Breezes. Illustrations by Harrison Cady.

The Woods at Night

This little doe first arrived just before dark on Nov. 14th, and spent the entire night...getting up and down several times throughout the night. The last photo was 5 am, Nov. 15th, when she is startled by something in the woods.

Halloween Snow Storm

20 Inches of October Snow. The Camera was too slow to capture the Animal that set it off....

Because of our altitude, the snow wasn't as wet and heavy as down in the Valley. The  Oak and Ash trees, heavy with leaves,  were thus able to bear the burden.
Not so fortunate were the thousands of Oaks and Maples elsewhere in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Woodland Duplex

Duplex: Rabbit Hole? Bear Cave? Curious. 

I was curious as to the occupant of  the "duplex" so set up a trail camera; a "video" created from the images reveal Bobby Coon coming out from the Tree Hole to explore the new addition to his neighborhood.   Lilly Porki,  a bit more timid..started forward to explore, then retreated.. back into her cave.

Bobby Coon followed her calling : "No Worries.. it's just a trail camera."

Coy-Wolf: October 23, 2011

"coy-wolf...! "

A "coy-wolf" on my Wildview trail camera! 11 PM.  About 15 minutes after a deer passed through.    While the  "Eastern Coyote" has been in this area for quite a few years, this is the first image "trapped" by my camera.
Read more:
Massachusetts Wildlife Link

Late Autumn Woods: A Poem by Bryant

Squirrel in the Autumn Woods

AUTUMN WOODS

William Cullen Bryant

    Ere, in the northern gale,
The summer tresses of the trees are gone,
The woods of Autumn, all around our vale,
Have put their glory on.
The mountains that infold,
In their wide sweep, the colored landscape round
Seem groups of giant kings, in purple and gold, That guard the enchanted ground.
     I roam the woods that crown
The upland, where the mingled splendors glow, Where the gay company of trees look down
On the green fields below.
My steps are not alone...
 In these bright walks; the sweet south-west, at play,
Flies, rustling, where the painted leaves are strown
Along the winding way.

The Days are Getting Shorter

Gathering under the Hemlock and Oaks

The animals are moving along the trail...there were Bear tracks, and further up in the woods, fresh moose tracks. Both were headed north, to the dens and swamps deeper into the State Forest.
The deer are beginning to group together.

After the Hurricane

Traveling along the deer trail, skirting the gorge, dodging blowdowns, and checking tracks.

I walk the woods quite often. Lyme Disease is ever present on my mind. Not only have I had Lyme, my daughter and three grandchildren, who live in Northern New Jersey,  suffer from late stage Lyme, a terrible disease which has robbed them of years of normal living, and caused them to endure countless hours  and travel far distances to obtain diagnosis and treatment from Lyme Aware Physicians.
Sometimes my camera catches the image of a terribly diseased deer.  Perhaps I am just trying to understand it all.Massachusetts Wildlife: Living with Deer

Hot Summer Afternoon, under the Oak Trees

The doe on the right had twins with her last week; today they are nowhere to be seen.

Where are the Twins?

Looking for her Twins

On Alert

Where oh Where have They Gone?

Twins In The Woods

Deer Twins 

Summer

Among the Ferns and Oaks

The woods belong to someone else. It was once an old farm...there is a cellar hole near the upper road. . I use these old roads on my walks. The trails aren't "posted," so I hope the owner doesn't mind my being there. Criss crossing the area are a maze of animal trails, and sometimes I will follow the fresh animal tracks, and set up my Trail Camera on one that looks especially well traveled. I notice this year, for the first time, that the hemlock trees are showing the effects of an infestation of the Hemlock Wooly Adelgid.  They are dropping needles at an alarming rate, and the older hemlocks are breaking off about 20 feet up the trunk. The woodland floor is littered with dead trees and branches. The Beech trees in the same area are also stressed, and the tops are breaking off in heavy winds.

I can't begin to imagine what these woods will look like in three or four years.  

Summer Morning

Spotted fishing off our raft this morning...

Great Blue Heron

Out of Hiding

Fawn Big Enough to Travel

Big Enough to Explore

The trail camera was able to capture this image because so many of the lower branches the surrounding Hemlock trees are infested with the Hemlock Wooly Adelgid.

Two June Visitors

We looked out our bedroom window this morning and saw two does standing on the lawn. They looked calmly out over the water, took a casual stroll around the garden, then wandered off through the ferns back into the woods.  In the 20 years we have been living here at "The Lake"  "full time," we never had deer in the front yard.  Once a Moose sloshed up out of the lake and stomped through the flower border. And a couple of winter-hungry "coy wolves" examined the compost.
 I like to think these lovely deer were paying us a social visit, but the logical explanation would be that something "unusually frightening " was prowling around "outside, over there, beyond the garden,"  in  their neck of the woods.

June Visitor

 I found wet, boggy locations where deer have lain down in muddy spots and rubbed.  If I come in from the Southern direction, I will see fresh animal tracks skipping off to the North. If I come in from the North, there will be signs that several deer have scooted South. I'm wishing for several more cameras. 

Night Walker

Expectant Doe

 Now is blessed
                    The rest
                   remembered

From "Wilderness," the Lost Writings of Jim Morrison.

End of May

Curious Doe

Evening Stroll

May 28th at 6 PM: on the Wildview camera: I wonder if she will discover the Salt Block?

The End of May

undernourished white tail deer 

It was a rough winter in our next of the woods..

Caught on The Trail Cam

Morning Stroll

Bringing New Batteries

Boy Playing in the Woods

Still Waiting for a Warm Day

Two Look At Two: A Poem by Frost

Looking for Acorns

Wild Turkey 

More Robert Frost:

A doe from round a spruce stood looking at them
Across the wall, as near the wall as they.
She saw them in their field, they her in hers.
The difficulty of seeing what stood still,
Like some up-ended boulder split in two,
Was in her clouded eyes; they saw no fear there.
She seemed to think that two thus they were safe.
Then, as if they were something that, though strange,
She could not trouble her mind with too long,
She sighed and passed unscared along the wall.
'This, then, is all. What more is there to ask?'

Robert Frost: Two Look at Two

Two Tramps in Mud time

A chubby raccoon....

And a Busy squirrel ...

Here on The  Hill April has done it's thing;  a roller coaster of rain, fog and mud,  with the sun breaking through now and then. The woods were full of signs, and I was hopeful...

And reminded of a Robert Frost poem:

"The sun was warm but the wind was chill.

You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.

But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March."

Robert Frost (1874–1963)
Two Tramps in Mud Time (1936

Feeding on Acorns at 10:30 pm

It's been almost a week since I checked the Wildview Trail Camera; Daytime exposures were of squirrels, and what looks to be the ear of one curious Yearling. Most of the visits were between 10 pm and midnight. The only food in the woods are acorns.

Changing Animal and Human routes through the woods...

One Year Later 

I'm scouting a new location for the wildlife camera.

A young boy who lives in our hamlet has graduated from riding his mini bike around the yard to riding the animal trail along the ridge.  A passing phase. As he and his bikes grow, he'll be riding further afield.

A Tale of Tails

Squirrel 

Raccoon

Lots of exposures on the Wildview Trail Camera today.
LOL

The  carefully designed "disguise"elements on and about the camera have all been stripped away.

First week in April

Doe exiting the grove

April: animals are moving back into this section of the woods.

These photos were taken with an older Bushnell Trail Sentry Camera. (2008 version) which has  a slow "wake up" time.

Also, while I saw the tracks of a small bear, and a smaller fox, they were too quick for the camera.

View from the Trail Camera

New Location, along a well used wildlife  trail. 

Hopefully the deer won't spot it and make a detour. There is a chance that  it's   "disguise"  of moss, hemlock branches and bark will help. 

It appears as though the ice won't go out until mid-April. 

Any guesses?
I say April 24th at 3 pm. Himself says April 15th.   (Update: Ice went out April 12th.) 

Time to bring in the bird feeders.
We saw  a young Black Bear yesterday.

Wild Turkeys Letting One another Know They are In the Area

The neighbor told me that there were 50 turkey's in this patch soon after I took the photo.