The beautiful leaves are only a memory now, unless you captured them on your camera.
I saw several folks shooting from many different places in the area trying to capture nature’s beauty at its peak. I hope they were able get the shots they wanted.
A lunar eclipse will occur during the week, but it looks like rain so we may not see it. It is predicted for 5 a.m. Wednesday morning (10/8) in the western sky, so you can get a picture of it, then turn your camera eastward and get one of the sunrise. We can only hope that the clouds part and give us a shot or two.
The weather has been great this week but the wind and rain took most of the pretty leaves to the ground.
The frogs, toads and salamanders are looking for a place to spend the winter under a log or in the bottom of a pond.
My turtles disappeared almost a month ago. They stopped eating fish food and just sat on a log soaking up sunshine.
I don’t think the heat they soaked up will keep them warm all winter but it must do something for their bodies before they go to sleep for the winter.
The loon chicks are out trying their wings and doing some touch-and-go landing. Once in a while they can take off but have a rough time landing.
I watched this happen on Bug Lake once as a chick did a long run before taking off in the air in what could have been his first flight.
The chick circled the lake a couple times before deciding to come back in for a landing. It hit the water pretty hard and nearly did a somersault before righting itself on the water.
It flapped its wings as if it was asking its mom’s approval of the performance. It was probably a few days before this juvenile tried to fly again.
The male brooktrout are cleaning off their beds of gravel in preparation for the females to lay their eggs. The males are wearing their prettiest colors: white fin edges and bright red bellies.
You sometimes see the females jumping out of the water to land on their sides to break free the eggs inside them. It is a marvel and beauty of nature that has been going on for a long time.
A month later the laketrout will be doing this on gravel shoals in many of our area lakes.
It’s something I only witnessed once when I was stationed at West Canada Lake.
I was there alone with just my dog for company so I had a lot of time to watch nature.
The laketrout were gathering on a shoal not far from the dock and cleaning off an area to lay their eggs.
These fish—some six to 12 pounds—swam right under the dock and schooled up around the shoal. The females were jumping and landing on their sides, which alerted me to the spot they were working on. It was a neat experience to watch and something I will never forget.
I have a neat flower in my yard—a pink blooming crocus—that pops up every fall. It doesn’t have any leaves, just five flowers that come out of the ground that bloom for about a week.
I don’t know where I picked this one up; maybe when I was weeding at the Adirondack Museum.
No Moose reports this week. I did saw tracks on the Rockdam Road in the Moose River Area, so I know they are still running around during the mating season. On the other hand, the deer are foraging for anything green they can get their mouths on as there are no beechnuts or cherries for them to bulk up on.
This rather mild fall has left lots of green clover and grasses for them to forage on.
You see both bucks and does together in small herds and sometimes, just three or four bucks. This will change once the rut begins and there is competition for does. The smaller bucks may follow the larger bucks around at a distance but won’t get in their way.
It only takes one beating and they learn their lesson about who is boss on the block.
There is still a week left for trout fishing…but that’s another story. See ya.