by Gary Lee
With all the cloud cover we have tonight it doesn’t look as if we are going to see the full moon. It sure was bright on Friday night (8/28) as I was coming home from my program at the Woodgate Library.
I only saw a couple deer and one mangy coyote on the trip home.
I talked with Forest Ranger John Scanlon who lives on the Number Four Road and he just returned from a Western Fire assignment as Crew Boss for the team of 20 from New York.
They were on a large Stouts Creek Fire in Oregon doing backfiring at night when conditions permitted.
He said he had some new people on the crew who had never been west before who were in training.
They were backfiring into timber that was 150 feet tall from a bulldozed line, as the pictures show.
The heat from a backfire like this is really hot and you always have to be checking to make sure sparks don’t get across the fire line.
They were on assignment for 19 days and the day they returned another team of 20 from New York traveled west to a fire in northern California.
There is always a possibility of danger while fighting these fires and already this season 13 firefighters have lost their lives.
Hope and pray for a safe return for all the forest firefighters waging a different kind of war out west.
One night while we were trying to catch loons the barred owls and coyotes were talking to us after the loons got wound up.
This was at Rollins Pond with campers at almost every site.
Some of them lighted us up after we shined our light on them at their campsite.
I think some of them were night fishing from shore when we shined our bright lights to locate the loons.
Sometimes their lights were brighter than ours. When we asked them to turn off their lights, some did while others did not.
At least they didn’t have a shotgun like the one guy we bumped into last year.
Those loons lost their chicks this year so we didn’t have to go to that lake.
I had a birding group at Sagamore and we got to see a few birds.
The birds weren’t talking very much but we played a few calls and one Canada warbler was still calling after we watched it for about half an hour.
Its calls got all the other birds in the area to come in and check us out so we got to see them also.
They were just catching bugs to fatten up for their trip south and not paying any attention to our presence.
Just before we were going in for supper one night a loon was right in front of the dining hall having a meal of its own.
He had caught a 15-inch sucker and worked on it for a while before getting it head-first and putting it down the hatch.
The fish was so big that I could have almost fit my fist down its throat.
I caught it all on film. Once the loon got started it didn’t take long to finish the fish off. He did kind of give a burp after that big meal.
Speaking of loons, there has been an immature red-throated loon on Fourth Lake for most of the summer.
First a young fisherman caught him on his line off the south shore.
The bird was taken to the Health Center but it didn’t have insurance so it couldn’t get treatment.
Lyn Kinney took the situation in hand and called Nina Schoch in Ray Brook for help.
Nina told her to cut off the line and release the bird, which was thought to be juvenile common loon.
If any pictures were taken at the time I did not see them.
The bird was seen several times after it was released and was photographed by folks at the Kenmore a couple times.
It’s an immature red-throated loon that came back a year early so it doesn’t have adult plumage.
This loon is a little smaller than a common loon, brown in color with a whitish head but it has a loon beak.
I’ve looked for it three times but have only seen common loons, lots of gulls and one cormorant.
If anyone sees this bird, please give me a call and take its picture.
There have been a few monarchs seen in the area.
Some must have been here as they laid eggs and the caterpillars are munching on milkweeds.
Some of these have already gone into chrysalis waiting to become adults and some have become adults in the air.
I have a few caterpillars on my milkweeds and if you check close you might find some on yours.
They prefer younger plants and need sunshine just like the adults to be active and eat.
I move some of my caterpillars to a sunnier spot. This way they will eat more and grow faster.
Three that I moved last week already have gone into chrysalis and are going to be in flight very soon.
The hot week we are scheduled to have may help more of these eat more milkweeds and hatch out of their chrysalis.
In the spring when the milkweeds are just coming up less than five inches tall I cut a few to eat.
They are as good as asparagus and cheaper.
These cut plants have enough energy to put up a new plant.
These new plants will most likely attract monarchs that are laying eggs.
Brooktrout have been growing all summer, now it’s time to catch and eat a few… but that’s another story.
See ya.