by Gary Lee
It’s looking more and more like a green Christmas in the north country. The western mountains are getting hammered—some with more than two feet of snow—but as the cold out there clashes with the warm air back east there have been tornadoes in December.
Some areas of Texas and bordering states are getting 3 to 5 inches of rain so we’ll see what it brings when it reaches here.
I saw dandelions blooming at the Inlet Golf Course today and collected seeds from the fringed gentians yesterday…some of which were still in bloom.
There are still some flowers in bloom on my honeysuckle vine; I’ve never had them in December before.
The raccoons and bears are still out and about so your feeders aren’t safe yet.
I suggest you bring them in at night and just leave them out during the daytime.
There are still a lot of birds out in the woods that are mostly feeding on balsam cone seeds.
Some of the bigger birds are still hunting for dropped beechnuts in some places.
Just yesterday I heard a chickadee chip so I did some spishing.
About thirty chickadees showed up, then came four red breasted nuthatches, a couple white breasted nuthatches, four golden crowned kinglets, four blue jays, and a few American goldfinch.
Then a barred owl opened up and a raven flew down the valley.
In another spot I saw a slate-colored junco fly up so I spished some more. About thirty juncos came out of the small spruces and chipped at me.
I thought most of them had gone south, but I was wrong.
A few more blue jays have moved into the feeder.
Most of them are now wearing bands as they went for the corn in the potter trap.
I caught one that I had banded last year in September and a few that I banded just a couple months ago.
Today a few flocks of Canada geese flew over as Karen and I were walking.
Two flocks were way up in the clouds and another was quite low as if they had just taken off from a nearby lake.
Diane Bowes said the Utica Marsh was covered with geese during the week.
We just came home from Big Moose and there was a barred owl sitting on the telephone line by Moss Lake.
If you had the power on at your camp or summer home last Wednesday (12/9) when we had the power surge, you should check for damage as many folks’ electrical appliances were cooked. Luckily nothing burned down.
This affected places all the way to Raquette Lake so have your place checked out as National Grid is paying for damages.
Some of the old camps that I’ve searched around were used by the logging companies to house a dam builder.
These dams were built on the side streams that flowed into the South Branch of the Moose River.
Each spring after the big run off had gone by, several logs remained that didn’t make it down the run.
These logs were put back in the river and these side stream dams were blown and a second run of logs went down the river.
In some place these side streams were also used to float logs down to the main stream of the Moose River.
The outlet of Limekiln Lake was blasted and made into a straight channel so logs would go down it.
Three dams were built on the outlet and used to float logs down that stream all the way to the Moose River.
A little side stream, which is called Limekiln Swamp on the map, was also dammed not far up from Limekiln Creek.
There was a big landing just below this dam where logs were stored to be floated down this little stream into the creek and then into the Moose River.
There was a camp at this dam location where the men worked from to maintain all these other dams. The tote road to this camp came in from the South Shore Road at the Third Lake Parking Area. This road went by the Tuttle Camp and two other camps which I only knew as the police camps.
There was a single phone line to this camp at the dam site.
Several sports used this road as access to hunt the area in back of Limekiln Lake.
They built small camps along Limekiln Swamp and Limekiln Creek before the road to Limekiln Lake was built.
This road is the cross country ski trail that still goes to Limekiln Lake Campsite.
Still time to clean up that flower garden… but that‘s another story. See ya.