We have a pair of bobcats. Probably a breeding couple.
Also, this is the first year that we are responsible for decorating the town commons. Our ex-neighbors used to do it but we inherited the job when they moved to Kentucky. We called upon our friends and got it done in about 90 minutes. We went out earlier in the week to cut the tree and Kip's Tree Farm (who generously donates the tree every year).
Looked out the kitchen window the other day and saw this barred owl on one of our birdhouses. It was probably scanning the field for mice. I mentioned to Briar that, this time of year, we probably had mice living in the birdhouse. She responded that they were probably quietly singing the ABC song (which is what she did while a bear tore our utility trailer apart in the middle of the night on a camping trip when she was young)
Tapped on the glass and got it to turn to the camera
Kristen's birthday was November 9 so I decided to book us into the Fairmont le Chateau Frontenac in Old Quebec for a couple of nights. It was a long drive so I booked us into a motel in Lyndonville, VT on the way up (kind of a sad little town).
The hotel is in the walled portion of Quebec City and sits on the site of the fort that once defended Quebec from British and American invaders.
The fort/hotel sits on top of the bluffs. This funicular takes you down to the old town near the edge of the St. Lawrence. It's also possible to take the stairs.
That's the hotel from down below.
Again.
There's Kristen with the hotel in the background This boardwalk runs along the top of the bluff from wall to wall. The fresh lumber construction is a toboggan run that will start from the battery at one end of the wall and run for a couple of hundred yards.
We stayed on the 4th floor and looked out on this park and at the St. Lawrence.
The front of the hotel. The archway down along the right side leads through the entry courtyard to the exit archway in the previous picture.
The entry courtyard.
Looking across the entry courtyard.
St. Lawrence River / Gulf of St. Lawrence. We were surprised to learn that the St. Lawrence Seaway is tidal all the way to Trois-Rivieres (halfway to Montreal).
We enjoyed watching the car ferries from our window. They were going directly across the river but had to point upstream and fight the current all the way.
On our departure morning, we woke up to Quebec's first snow of the season. It wasn't heavy but it stayed with us most of the way to Montreal where we spent one night before heading home.
Not really (bears and porcupines hardly ever travel together). I'm sure that the bear was just checking out the bird feeder situation (still inside for now). The porcupine (and his friends the raccoons and skunks are there to dig for grubs in the lawn).
We've had our first hard freeze so nothing else will be growing this season. Snow flurries were forecast for a bit this morning but they didn't happen.
I've been busy with my fall brush cutting. First order of business was to cut back what had grown in the area that I cleared last year. I'm about done with that. Next order of business will be to clear some more of the brambles and collect them into burn piles (burn season is January 15 to May 1).
The only trouble that we've ever had with bears going after the feeders have been at night. That's why we long ago started bringing the feeders in at night and putting them back out in the morning.
Then, there was the close call the other afternoon (see previous post). Now, just a few days later, a bear destroyed one of our feeders at 10:30 this morning.
We'll replace that feeder but they're going to need to stay inside until the bears forget about us, move on or go into hibernation.
Tuesday afternoon, while I was at the dentist, Kristen was working on a number of projects (gardening, getting the trash out, bringing in the bird feeders, etc.). When we checked the wildlife cameras a couple of days later, in the midst of the clips of her moving in and out of the house was a clip of a bear moving towards the bird feeder. The next clip showed the bear's butt heading back the other way. Without ever realizing it, Kristen must have chased the bear off.
We've
been planning this trip for quite a while. During our planning we learned that
we had one activity that we wanted to include that was just about impossible to
book. There was only one date where we could book two roundtrip tickets (Fort
William to Mallaig and back) on the Jacobite (Hogwarts Express) Therefore, our
reservations on the Jacobite came first and all else fell into place around
them.
With
our ground travel all by train and bus, we decided to travel light. Iceland air
subscribes to the very small Ryan Air carryon requirements so we bought a
couple of backpacks that met those requirements. We were allowed 22 lbs. My
starting weight was 14 lbs and Kristen came in at 10.6. We had to send our
clothes out a couple of times for some rather expensive laundering but that was
OK.
The newer of the two wildlife cameras hasn't been capturing anything lately so I did some work on it. I swapped its SD card with the older camera and reformatted both cards. Got about 60 clips of lawn mowing and vegetable gardening on the old camera but found these among the 155 clips on the new.
We just spent a week in the White Mountains (Northeast corner of New Hampshire near North Conway) with Briar, Gus and the Kids.
Our normal route there and back takes us East from Lincoln over the Kancamagus Pass. On our way in, we encountered a moose just east of the pass. This is only our second moose siting since moving back here but we at least got some pictures this time.
Our 1st full day there, Sunday, we took a hike up to Ripley Falls in the morning. In the afternoon, Briar, Gus and the kids went to Santa's Village while we stayed behind (admission at most of the parks in the area include a couple of hours before closing on one day and then another full day).
On the trail up to the falls.
Monday, we all went on a 3 hour, 3 mile tubing trip that took us right up to the Maine state line. The route included several rapids that left us with some bruised tailbones.
Tuesday, we all went for a couple of hikes in the morning. Then, while Briar and Gus went to lunch and shopping, Kristen and I took the kids to Lunch and Miniature Golf. It was unbelievably hot and humid and we all got home before the rain started.
Wednesday, everyone went back to Santa's Village so Kristen and I had lunch in North Conway and checked out the shops and outlet stores.
Thursday morning, we all hiked to the top of Blackcap Mountain (something that we always do once or twice). In the afternoon, we hiked into Diana's Baths (a long series of falls and pools) and went wading.
Friday morning, we all went up to Wildcat Mountain Ski Resort where Kristen, Briar and I rode the zip lines. After lunch, we headed over to the Attitash Mountain Ski Resort where Niko and I rode the Mountain Coaster and Briar and Maya rode the Alpine Slide. In the evening, we celebrated our last night there and all went out to dinner.
I didn't get pictures of many of these events so I'm including a link to Briar's montage that, I'm sure, includes everything (but no moose!).
Went to take the recycling out and found this critter walking between me and the bin. Any other animal would run but bobcats freeze and then start stalking you. Needless to say, I headed back inside and waited for it to clear out.
Recycling out, it was time to bring in the bird feeders. The bears will mangle them if I don't so I leave them on the bulkhead steps each night. I no sooner opened and popped out the bulkhead doors and there was my friend again. It was apparently focused on a rabbit so I ran for the camera.
Had to distract it to get the face.
Then back to stalking the rabbit
We watched it out the window for a while and, when it lunged, it kept leaping from the weeds from one end of the side yard to the other. Don't know if it was successful or not.
As long as I'm at it, here are a couple of groundhog/woodchuck/marmot/ pictures from the other day.
Through the window scrren.
Caught it off the end of the house. Wildlife camera on the tree at the right didn't catch it.
I suppose that it's a good thing but we haven't seen any bears this summer. The neighbors have reported seeing several so we know that they've been out there.
One of our wildlife cams finally picked one up. The camera was aimed across the back of the lawn toward the windmill. The bear was crossing from the driveway toward the creek at the edge of the lawn. The Japanese Maple in the clip is about 4' tall so that will give you a sense of the bear's size.
After about 30,000 miles and 10 months living in our trailer, we decided that the time had come to sell it. We loved our trips in the trailer but decided that we'd rather take more frequent car or plane trips and stay in hotels (away from the railroad tracks).
With the trailer out of the way, we can move forward with our plans to repave the driveway.
This was taken maybe 10 days ago when we we're preparing to list the trailer on Craigslist. Look at the difference in those trees!
Seems like it should be time for the snow to be over but it's snowed twice this week. It snowed enough on Monday that they got the plows out (we had been speculating that they had already removed the plows from the town trucks).
Monday's snow melted. At 6:00 am this morning, there was no snow. The picture below was shot at 8:30 am. It melted again through the day and now it's dumping again.
We've had Nicko and Maya here this week while their parents visit Iceland. We've had a number of activities going on.
I burned my last brush pile on Tuesday. With all of the snow that was on the pile,I wondered if I'd even be able to get it started. It wound up being the easiest burn of the year.
Kristen and Maya have been sewing some clothes for Maya's American Girl dolls. Maya's been doing most of the stitching by hand.
Kristen has wanted a raised strawberry bed back by her raised vegetable beds. I built her one on Wednesday and sited it just across the creek from the vegetable beds. The vegetable beds are both 4' x 8' and the strawberry bed is 2' x 8'.
The strawberry bed it to the right and back behind the vegetable beds,
Kristen has been after me to build a raised strawberry bed over on the other side of the creek that runs along the edge of the lawn. Her concern was a dead tree that she says has concerned her every time that she works with the vegetable beds. Naturally, that tree had to come down before work on the raised bed could commence.
After watching some This Old House and purchasing some tree felling wedges, I was confident that I could drop the tree across my burn area on the other side of the creek. It didn't quite work out that way.
The tree fell exactly where Kristen was afraid that it would go. It went right across the center of where the strawberry bed will be. It crushed the corner of the fence around one of the vegetable beds. This was easy to fix and did no damage to the actual bed.
The trunk was about 12" thick at the base and was about 75' high (I measured it once it was down). It came within about 6" of hitting the garage.
Here are a couple of pictures that Kristen took (as evidence for the next time that I go to cut down a tree):
I had obviously already started on the cleanup here. That's the stump back behind the leftmost of the 2 rocks at the top-left part of the picture. The bent corner post is at a 45 degree angle. The taller post is one of the bird houses that I had moved to safty (nice try!).
This bird house was unscathed (actually, they both came through fine).
It's been a very snowy March. The fourth Nor'easter of the month should hit in the next couple of hours. We've been very fortunate here. We've had the snow and high winds but we've never lost power and, not being near the coast, we avoided all of the heavy flooding.
We've had our wildlife cameras out almost as long as we've lived here. We received our first camera for Christmas 2015 and our second this past Christmas. We've repositioned the cameras many times but have only captured animals a few times. Imagine our surprise this morning when I checked the cameras and found four animal clips (three taken one ofter another).
I'm attaching the animal clips but first, a photo of some very unusual icicles that we found over at the local school:
Oakham Center School has a metal roof and the heavy snow had started to slide off before it refroze. The icicles slid with it and ended up at this impossible angle. Notice that some of them continued to grow after the shift so they now appear to be curved.
Now here are those clips:
This deer clip was obviously taken on a different day.
Then we have this bobcat.
I almost missed the fox in this picture. It's in the
lower left corner at the beginning of the clip.
Finally, we have a coyote (or possibly, a coyote-wolf hybrid).We've heard them but we've never seen one.
We've seen quite a few bobcats lately. They must live up in the woods behind the house. We keep running into them out in the driveway.
Bobcats have a reputation for having a rather nasty disposition so we give them a wide berth when we see them. They react strangely when they know that they're being watched. Even if they appeared to be in a hurry when first spotted, they'll suddenly start biding their time. Often, they'll just sit down and lick their paws while they stare back.
Kristen caught a couple of pictures of this one from one of the upstairs windows.
Don't know what this animal was but it was certainly different At first, we were thinking that it might be an otter (which is certainly possible in this area) but online pictures weren't quite right. Porcupine was close (and we've certainly seen some of those). The closest match was a groundhog / woodchuck / marmot. Guess we'll never know for sure. Our wildlife camera was pointed in the right direction but turned up nothing.
I've mentioned before that the burning season in Oakham is from January 15 until May 1. Permits are free and can be obtained online. Any time that you want to burn, you call the number on the permit to see if the Fire Department feels that the weather conditions are right and to get their authorization (they probably limit the number of fires each day).
Obviously you don't want to burn when it's too dry, too windy or when it's raining. A light covering of snow on the ground doesn't hurt. Light snow flurries are optimal.
I started this burn season with five burn piles. Three were right next to each other so it made sense to burn them at the same time. Neighbor Jim offered to help and, once he sized up the situation, we got the middle pile burning good and then used his Kubota backhoe to pull the other two piles over into the flames. Those piles were off to the left of where our wildlife camera was pointed so we only got pictures of the tractor moving in and out of frame.
This week, I decided to try the next pile by myself and, as it happened, the burn was mid frame. The following is one of the 48 movie clips that were taken.
A little diesel helps things along!
I still have one pile to burn. It's out on the other side of our leach field close to Barre Road. This last pile will be a bit different. The others were primarily multiflora rose vines which were horribly tangled up with each other. This one is mostly tree branches.
It's still a long time until May so I might still cut some more brush and get it burned. We'll have to see.
We were supposed to have some rain last night with maybe some light snow toward dawn. I don't know if we ever got the rain but we did get 4-5" of very wet snow (the heavy kind that sticks to everything). It was kind of windy as well so it's pretty spectacular this morning.
These first pictures (bluish tone) were taken out the windows early in the morning:
Off the farmers porch. That thing that looks like a giant potted cauliflower is a rhododendron.
Also off the farmers porch.
The birds go nuts when it snows. They may never find another bite to eat!
Out the upstairs front windows. Look at the snow on the utility lines!
We went for our daily walk after breakfast and then plowed the driveway. First, I took some pictures outside the house:
The windmill was turning madly but was unable to dislodge the snow that was caked to the blades.
Across the road.
Looking toward our house from up on Maple St.. On a normal winters day, you might see the house through there.
Walking down Barre St. Our property is along the right side to the bottom of the hill.
There's a peek at the house from Barre St.
The temperature is dropping. It was about 32° F when we got up this morning. At 10am, it's 19° with a windchill of -1°. Surprisingly, it's very clear and sunny.
