Winter hasn’t even begun yet and we’ve already had more winter weather than all of last winter. Snowplow drivers have been busy day and night to keep ahead of the white stuff and temperatures have been in the single digits and less several nights.
I was out checking traps on Saturday morning and it never got above zero the whole day. The snow was over two feet deep so it was tough to trudge through.
Luckily a couple of snowmobiles had broken the trail so I didn’t take my snowshoes.
About a third of the way into Third Lake Creek I saw where a monster black bear had crossed the trail and a little further on where it had crossed the trail a second time.
By the looks of the track this bear was five hundred pounds or more and not Big Foot—just because there is no Big Foot. Sorry, Adirondack Jack Leach.
Just before I got to Third Lake Creek I saw where a smaller bear had come out onto the trail and crossed the bridge, went back into the evergreens, and then crossed the trail a little further down.
There he went right over to one of my fisher pole sets that I had pulled on Tuesday and took the piece of beaver meat off the pole.
These bears must be getting more energy from the beechnuts they are eating than what they are burning up, allowing them to stay out and roam around.
They haven’t seen beechnuts like this in a long time so they are just enjoying the eats.
They may not go to bed for the winter.
Sad news to report. The loon that was frozen in Limekiln Lake that we caught and moved to Seventh Lake got frozen in there also. It had three weeks to fly out of Seventh but chose not to, or couldn’t fly. I saw it try several times to get off the water but it never did, so it had some problem that kept it from being able to fly.
A bird that can’t fly is not much of a bird unless you are an Ostrich.
I went over on Thursday night and it was frozen in a small hole close to shore.
A bald eagle was sitting on the ice not far away. We decided that the loon was better as eagle food than to move it again.
On Friday morning the eagle killed the loon and dragged it up on the ice.
It was snacking on the dead bird when I went over at 9 a.m., so I got both birds for the Old Forge Christmas Count as they were seen within three days of the count day.
Speaking of count day on Saturday December 14, I did some counting while on the hike described above.
Along the Matt’s Trail I heard a couple crows and ravens calling and flying overhead. I heard a woodpecker tapping, so I made some owl calls and the blue jays started streaming out of the woods to check me out.
Final count was 30 as they flew across the trail.
A couple more hairy and one downy woodpecker also came to the owl calls. A little further along I flushed a grouse and then nothing until I got into the evergreens by Third Lake Creek.
A black-capped chickadee scolded me so I pished a little and ten more showed up along with four red-breasted nuthatches, one brown tree creeper, two golden crowned kinglets, one black-backed and one pileated woodpecker. That was a good stop.
I had gray jays and boreal chickadees there a couple weeks ago but not today. On the way back out I got a couple more hairy woodpeckers, then I heard something that sounded like dogs barking in the sky—snow geese.
Three big V’s of them went right overhead so I counted as fast as I could. I counted 80 birds—a good find.
To start the day I went up to Seventh Lake and got the bald eagle. Then I stopped at
Fifth Lake, but didn’t see any of the Hooded Mergansers in the open water that were there the day before.
I then went down behind the Inlet Town Hall and got a king fisher over the open water and 20 mallard ducks in the open water of the channel.
The feeders at my house were busy on this cold day with 100 goldfinch, 10 chickadees, four purple finch, 13 juncos, three downy woodpeckers, two hairy woodpeckers, two white-breasted nuthatches, two red-breasted nuthatches, three tree sparrows and five blue jays.
On Thursday, Kay Carmichael told me she had a Carolina wren at her suet feeder at Sixth Lake.
That would be a new bird for me in Hamilton County, so I planned on going over to see it on Sunday.
Then, while clearing snow around the house on Sunday morning, what did I see but my own Carolina wren.
I called Kay and told her that her wren had made it to my place. She said that was not the case as she now had two of them.
Many other feeder watchers—MaryAnn Nelson, Richard Nelson, Louise Watson, Debi Ritz, Don Kelly, Tina Bradt, Peg Flora, Bill and Dede Bulson and Jodi Pross had some good birds, which added to the species count of 26 and total bird count of 635.
Among the counted birds were starlings, cardinals, mourning doves, Canada geese and redpolls.
Birds seen during the count period but not on count day were common loon and hooded merganser.
Thanks for reading about my wanderings and sightings for another year. Hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!