Say Hello to Our Little Friend

Since I was able to get a few good shots of the pine mouse, I decided to try my hand at making a gif of it, so let's see if it'll post here!

Daze Cache: Starry Starry Ice

Aarrgh, the COLD!

I know, I know!

But the marvels to behold! You HAVE to go see them, because they can't come visit, and you'll never see them any other time of year!

I'm talking about a couple kinds of ice forming while we sleep!

For instance:

Some determined folks cart Bobhouses onto the lakes, whether the ice is "plenty thick" or not. With I had a closer shot of this, as the house on the right is actually an old skilift tramway car upcycled.

Sabbaday Falls on the Kanc (Route 112) in its usual fine form with icicles two or three times taller than I am. *Don't trek near without crampons - REAL crampons, not the cheap driveway ice creepers that can't bite as well as you'd need. Trust me; tried that on the Oliverian Brook trail and fell so hard my hip was purple for a month.

 Back to happier things, though! haha

"Starry Starry Ice" - some rime ice formed on a stick that was sticking out of the frozen brook surface.

Pretend this one is rotated left, OK? Brook surface with various ice forms.

"Where's the ice in this?" you ask?
Why, see the rainbow on the bottom edges of each of the clouds? Those are courtesy of ice crystals up high bending the sunlight "just so".

Be sure to wear protection looking toward the sun, of course. Plus, I couldn't see these without my sunglasses, and put them in front of the camera to help cut the glare to capture it.

Here in central/northern NH, there's still plenty of shape and color going on, even in winter. If you know how, when and where to look.

What do you have around you? Do you know? Find out and tell me!

Have fun!

"Lark"

Woods with a View: The Observatory

For those readers just entering into our seat in the woods, I thought I'd include a couple photos of what we call "The Observatory" set up by the little brook that runs through the property.

As you can see plainly, it's rather high tech: some ropes and a cheap tarp, with an upended broom as a "tentpole" of sorts for more headroom while seated on the cheap foam pad for our boney butts. (*You don't want a sharp stick for the pole, as snow load can force it to poke a hole).

Side view

View approaching from back on trail by driveway; "Island" in center of brook fork, then "Far Ridge" across second fork.

We set up this rig last fall before the temps had a chance to freeze the ground and make it hard to stake the lines, plus to enjoy a dry spot on rainy days when we want to take a break from our labors and just see who's coming to visit. Suet and seeds didn't go out until the bears went to bed for obvious reasons.

Back in the autumn, the turkey moms and juvies (with and without beards), about a dozen total, came down the hill, flapped a couple of times to leap across the narrow brook (which is just barely jumpable for a human, even taller Bill) and made their way up the Far Ridge.

Though we haven't seen them over the winter around here, I did get to spot several the other day. They seem to prefer to give a larger girth to strange things than even squirrels and smaller birds do.

Three turkeys blend with woods and stumps on the Far Ridge.

Mostly, short the rare sighting of the Christmas Mink (first time I saw), we've studied the gray and red squirrels, as well as the white- and red-breasted nuthatches, hairy woodpecker and chickadees, and now about two dozen goldfinches in their winter drab before whatever plants it is they eat in spring bring back their former golden glory.

This is not to say we're not observed, ourselves. Indeed, the Reds continue to study us on the way to and from their own conferences of mewling and chatters to outright skirmishes (usually involving the Island Red encroaching on the stump stashes of those on this side).

Conference

Dime-sized footprints and tiny little claw tracks to give them launch capability on icy snow - SO CUTE!

So there you have it, a little sampling of how we start our day. It's also where we get the only accurate weather forecast for the next few hours; if there's a horde of everything at the seed, storm's coming. If not, they're browsing on other things like some of the many spiders or snow mosquitoes still making their way about or some juicy larvae under the bark.

The chickadees stashed food last autumn like the squirrels did, and they manage to drop their body temp a good 10 degrees from 108 degrees F to conserve heat while they're stuffed in their little hole in a birch tree somewhere, one per hole, only to lose 10% of their weight by morning burning off the fat they gained the day before and stored over their chests. As soon as there's enough light to see trees, they're off getting into their stashes to fuel the daily foraging.

The woods are full of homes and stashes, it seems, whether the trees are rotted or healthy, standing or fallen. Sometimes it's best to include watching our own tracks and impacts.

Have a great adventure!

Til next time,

"Lark" (Gwyn)

"Some Perching Required"

This.
Days of.
This.
Hope it's good, because I can only see every feather right now!

And, yes, it IS supposed to be "upside down". Its title is "Some Perching Required".

Though I had some of my bird and garden reference pics to work from, the idea was from a memory of some years ago when we had a colony of Pale Corydalis flowers that came up from the burn spots of smudge fires we'd set here and there to discourage black flies from biting us while we worked the garden.

A hummingbird was trying really hard to get a sip from the tiny flowers while in mid-flight, but just enough of a breeze kept preventing that, burning calories with no return at all. So, he took matters into his own claws, perched on the tip near the blooms, and tried it upside down.

I don't know if he found it worth the trouble, as he didn't share that secret with me again. But I thought his innovation was clever and due some credit, considering it's such as he who helps pollinate food plants for us, too.

As it turns out, these Ruby Throated Hummingbirds are the only ones who raise their families in North America. What a privilege to see them a whole season!

What Were the Birds Hearing?

I got a call from a fellow nature hound, excitedly telling me about an incident she was lucky enough to witness. We're pretty sure it's very common in the bird world, but easy to go unnoticed if one just assumes birds eat and fly and that's that.

She said she was watching blue jays, juncos, chickadees and nuthatches on feeders and limbs and on the ground, nibbling away and chattering like they do on any winter day. Until, in synch, they all stopped in their tracks and stood motionless.

For 15 minutes, with the exception of an occasional head turn.

Then, again in unison, they all resumed feeding and flying about.

It doesn't seem like critters to stop feeding without a darn good reason, and there were no predators about (if so, they'd fly up and away, yes?).

One thought was perhaps an earthquake. If any were nearby, they hadn't been registered yet. But I DID see, here http://earthquaketrack.com/p/united-states/new-hampshire/recent that Laconia, NH (about 40 miles from where she was) just last night had a 1.7 earthquake. "Maybe they were all sensing an aftershock from that?" (the same site listed back in December there was a 2.1 in Exeter, NH, and a lesser one in Laconia 12 days later).

We chatted about dogs we knew that were afraid of thunderstorms, hiding in the closet an hour before the arrival of one (or, in one extreme case, same fearful dog went out into the deluge not in bravery but in panic, to dig a hole in the dirt floor of the barn, only to learn a microburst had been occurring twenty miles away).

Today, though, my friend was wise to also note the weather and barometer. "The pressure had dropped and it was snowing an hour later". This made a bit more sense. It called to mind that we've heard robins in the warm seasons using a different alert-type song to warn of shifting weather, as if to tell their buddies, "Finish your forages and get to shelter!", followed by the same call ten minutes before the passing of a cloudburst to bring a message of "All is clearing, back to the bugs!"

It wouldn't surprise us if her birds today had heard the distant calls of their friends alerting the approach of precip, and maybe groups in other directions alerting the passage of it, so they might know where the approach is relative to their positions, to decide best on sheltering or checking out another feeding station.

I always appreciated the robins' insights so I could adapt my day to the weather. It's good to know we can have similar insights in the winter! They sure are a lot more reliable than any human I've heard!

Have a great one!

"Lark"

Why I'm Not Sylvia

Mom said Dad wanted to name me 'Sylvia', but that she didn't like that name, and that's why I'm Gwyneth. For the longest time, I didn't think much of that version, except I grew more and more curious about the fact that both names use the letter 'y', which is not a small scorer in the Scrabble game world. No, really; hear me out.

Mom was BIG into Scrabble, which had already been around half a forever by the time my 3 older sisters came around and it became part of our upbringing. I noticed another commonality about our names; when positioned 'just so' on a Scrabble board, there are SERIOUS double-letter or -word scores to be had. I'm sure you'll appreciate the great lengths to which I've gone to illustrate these very important concepts, below.

I think that Mom's not 'liking' the Sylvia name was only part true.

She didn't like it as WELL as the higher-scoring letters and placement of 'Gwyneth' in her little game. Her first kid, Pamela, brought a whopping 29 points with two high-stakes consonants, 'p' and 'm'. Well, that, plus the double word score for the game's first player. After that, even with the cleverer 2 higher-scoring letters, at 4 each, 'h' and 'y', she only got 18 with my second sister.

By the time Leigh rolled around, seems Mom was entering into her Gaelic phase; but she was down to a score of 13, maybe because of board crowding. Notice that 'Sylvia' would've only garnered a 12, which would've been depressing (certainly unwelcome).

Now, Mom also disclosed to me she'd thought of spelling my name with two 'd''s at the end, as is tradition (in Wales, anyway, not that anyone stateside would know to pronounce them as 'th'). I'm grateful she didn't, or anyone saying my name would sound congested, and I'd be sentenced to gently smile, explain, and sometimes roll my eyes for the rest of my life.

Not to mention, by using the 'th' she got one more point than 2 'd''s and was able to tie it in to the rest of the game.

On the other hand, the first three girls' name endings were somewhat musical: 'la, lee, lee', in a way. 'Gwyneth', on the other hand, almost rhymes with 'enough'. But, ah! When our adoptive sister came along in Mom's 70's, she brought with her a good 18 points of free score for Mom, which easily tied in to the framing already there.

I wonder, though, if Mom would've been so enthusiastic if Deb's name had been 'Sylvia', though. Hmmmm...

In any case, I gotta give Mom some points for her creative naming!

Lark in a Nutshell

I was just getting various seeds prepped to do sprout sketches/studies (when they're ready, of course), placing them on a table under the window in the dining room, when I noticed something: this little room is sort of like a living "self-portrait" of me.

On the bay window sill are potted plants, mostly spider plants, all of which came from a single, 4-leafed plant that stayed that way for the 3 years it was in a dimly-lit lodge of ours, but later went ballistic with babies (many of whom have found homes throughout the county). A couple of the plants are in mosaic pots made by a friend who's loved me (and whom I miss keenly); the mosaics were applied using antique pottery shards she found while mining an old farm "dump".

Two other pots hold the dormant (I hope!) forms of vincas from seeds my stepmom had on her counter the spring day she died. Even after 10 years, the seeds were viable enough. Being hybrids, even outdoors and open-pollinated they formed no seeds, so this may be their "only chance" of propogating, if they can do so by sending out shoots.

I'm an incurable naturalist, so I have not only a regular dried cob of corn, but a very immature one beside it, showing some of the mysteries of how cobs look while they form. A small horse hoof-shaped tree lichen I found shares the antique plate on which the corn cobs sit. I've prepped some zip bags of various seeds in damp paper towels to draw closeups from when they emerge.

Canning jars await nearby, because soon it'll be time to freshen the sap buckets and tap the maple trees we've found to see if this will be a better sugaring year than 2009. In our most bountiful year, 10 buckets were put out, 400 gallons of sap collected, making for 10 gallons of syrup cooked down. Last couple years, though, 20+ buckets were out, and only 120 gallons of sap (3 gal syrup yield). Even Maple Grove, the brand in the store, regretfully had to do without selling online, as there wasn't enough supply. Even store brand real maple syrup is holding steady at what amounts to $80/gallon.

$ aside, though, it's a tasty dance, scrunching atop the snow on snowshoes to tap the trees, the evergreen smell from the dry pine to feed the portable barrel stove Clueless designed, the mingling smells a couple hours after the stove is lit: pine fire, sweet sap boiling, the hot-metal smell chimney turning orange with the heat and the regular creaking of its expansion as it heats (or shrinking as it cools when the day's boiling is done). All mixed with the sweet smell of the air that's like the taste of the fresh mountain water springs.

Every sugar season is a mystery; no one seems to know what a tree needs to make sap happen in a big way. Last couple of years, with record snows, the tree bases were shaded from the sun, but the run was different tree to tree, no matter how much snow on their base, sun on their backs, whether in or out of a swamp. The only 'rule' that's universal with them is they want cold nights and 'warm' days (Clueless could tell you if trees also prefer wind or not).

Back to the dining room part of the "portrait", though. It's on that table I push my pencil to make lines to color in with paint, pen and ink, and/or other pencils.

In all, if the props in the dining room tell anything at all about me, at my core I have every reason to hope, and tinker, and know that this world is more full of mysteries and discoveries to be unveiled than I'll ever live on earth long enough to personally behold.

I only know for sure that if I pause long enough, now and then, to look closely at the surroundings outside, I may perchance see either a short-eared owl (or a broad-shouldered hawk, can't tell which yet) swoop into that big hemlock, or the flock of a dozen turkeys make their rounds getting driveway sand for their crops, or a swooping flock of juncos huddling against the house out of the wind, sunlight blazing off the white birch tree bark or sweeping ultramarine blue shadows across the field.

I am truly blessed not only with all that "company", but to be married well with my soulmate, Clueless, who in no small part makes joy in my life possible. Nay, inevitable.