The weather was real nice for the week ending August 29, but it got a tad damp over the holiday weekend; luckily it stayed warm. A couple mornings during this stretch, it was what you might call nippy.
The fall colors are showing up more and more, especially when you get to the higher elevations of Eagle Bay to Big Moose.
There were some moose sightings reported, now that they have begun travelling to find mates.
More often it’s later in the month of September, but a cow was spotted in Bald Mountain Pond on Thursday.
A nice bull was also seen during the week in Mitchell Pond.
There were tracks around Helldiver Pond again, but I received no reports of the big bull being in the pond.
I saw tracks in the road a couple times while in there, but no moose.
My bee balms are about spent, but the hummers are still looking at them and other flowers in the yard.
Most of the adult males have traveled south already, but some of the adult females and both male and female juveniles are still around.
Ted Hicks banded twelve new hummers at Stillwater this morning (8/31) and one retrap we had banded in July.
We thought we saw an adult male around the trap at the end, but we didn’t catch that one.
I missed two this morning, and can’t be certain if I caught them later or not.
When I got home they seemed to be buzzing around the flowers and feeders, but their numbers will keep going down in the next few weeks.
Many of the small warblers and swallows had already left on their trip to South America.
One bird, a brown booby, has been hanging around the lower end of Lake Champlain for over a week now.
I should have gone when he was around the Champlain Bridge and Crown Point. I waited till this week, when he was reported as having been seen by the crossing Essex Ferry.
I went on Thursday and searched as much of the shoreline and sand bars as I could get to.
I did see three new birds for Essex County in my search, but no booby.
At Noblewood Park just outside of Willsboro, there were many birds on the sand bars where the Boquet River enters the lake.
One sand point was covered with gulls.
There were a bunch of Herring and Bing-billed Gulls, as well as one Black-backed and one Bonapart Gull resting there.
A few little shore birds were flitting around, four lesser yellow legs, four sanderlings and one solitary sandpiper.
My trip ended just a little ways from my brother Bob’s house, so I stopped in and got to see his South African Safari pictures, which were neat.
He and his wife are thinking about another trip there next year.
Our Loon banding team went out on First Lake on Tuesday night.
We were trying to capture one of the loons we put the GEO locater in two years ago at about this time.
The team was Nina Schoch, John Ozard, Amy Sauer and myself.
We found the pair and two chicks at about eleven. We had both adults and a chick caught and processed by midnight.
The male of the pair was the one we were after, but we caught the female and chick first. We were able to pick up the male on the next pass.
The other chick was hanging right-tight to his dad, so I had to split them with the net to get just the male.
This male was quite feisty in the boat, and got a nip on a couple pieces of bare skin before he was put under a towel.
He was still wearing the GEO locater, which we took off. I have yet to hear what his travels were, but having worn it two years, they should be interesting.
We took blood and feathers from all the birds, and they were back on the water as a family when we left.
We checked the east end of First for the other family. They had been hollering at us all night, but they shut up and we never did see them.
We got off the water just a little after midnight. It was an early night.
Many have mentioned the yellowing of the needles on many of our Balsam trees in the area, mine included.
The yellowing, and eventual browning of needles and dying of some boughs, is caused by a needlecast fungi.
Needlecast diseases are common in balsam fir stands and Christmas tree plantations in the northeastern and north central United States; also in southern Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick.
There are three types of needlecast fungi—Lirula nervata, Lirula mirabilis and Isthmiella faullii. All cause similar disease symptoms on balsam fir.
These diseases may affect other firs planted in the same stand, but will not affect Douglas-fir or other conifer species.
This disease may kill the lower parts of some trees.
It can also cause boughs on trees to lose some of their needles, making them not very good for Christmas trees or wreath making.
It may actually kill smaller trees, and over a period of years, sometimes bigger trees, too.
There are other related diseases in balsam fir, which can resemble needlecast fungi.
I got all of this information online, as prepared by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northeastern Area State and Private Forestry.
Collecting wildflower seeds to share, but that’s another story. See ya.