January 5, 2020 - Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2020!  Perhaps you've heard of the "First Day Hike" initiative.  It was conceived by the Massachusetts State Park with the inaugural First Day Hike taking place at Blue Hills Reservation just south of Boston in 1992 [Ref:  Wikipedia] and now is promoted by dozens of outdoor oriented organizations.  New Year's Day 2020 was fortunate enough to occur after a nice fresh layer of snow arrived, so we put on the snowshoes and took a hike up Ladd Mountain in Meredith, and it was beautiful.

A winter wonderland on New Year's Day.

Right at the top we saw a fresh set of porcupine tracks traversing the summit from north to south.

The unperturbed track of the porcupine.

These tracks illustrate perfectly the attitude of the porcupine, safely ensconced behind its prickly barricade.  No other animal I know of walks along so slowly and nonchalantly, just making its way to its favorite hemlock tree to feast on some tender twigs and needles.

Taken a few years ago by my trail camera.

Winter is having a little trouble finding its rhythm this year, with only one cold spell, lots of warm weather, and alternating fronts bringing rain and snow.  There are still openings around the edges of the lake as well as many streams, and even in low spots in the forest.

Warm weather means open wet spots into January.  This is in the middle of the trail up to Ladd Mtn.

The birds are fine with the warm weather; with the feeders out, the usual collection has returned, including large flocks of goldfinches.

Sometimes they'll let a chick-a-dee join them.

We also have a regular visit from a Hairy Woodpecker.

I'd love to know if it's the same one that stops by every day.

The dark-eyed juncos appeared with the very first snow, being true to their alternate name, "snowbird".

There are no pictures from this next bird episode, but Linda saw an animal far out on the lake, which turned out to be a crow pecking at something in the ice.  The next thing that caught her eye was a large bald eagle flying straight at her from the spot the crow was at.  My guess:  the eagle saw the crow, and expecting to find something it could steal, swept down to take it away, and then flew off, either with or without something to eat.

On a walk below some power lines I came across the culprit to a power outage that struck a couple of houses on Harris Cove.

A burnt tree trunk that fell on the power lines.

I had met the line worker who had cleared this tree which fell on the power line and been pretty well charred by the time the circuit breaker cut the power.  Those line workers are pretty hardy souls, as this fault was over a tenth of mile from the nearest access point on some pretty rugged terrain.

Another interesting find before the most recent snow was this curved track out on the ice.

Hop, hop, hop, sliiiiide.

The widely separated plops following the slide tell me it must have been an otter out playing in the slush, but don't ask me how it managed to make that banked curve.

I'll end with a panorama from the top of Ladd Mountain - don't wait until 2021 to go there!  Let me know if you need directions.

Looking across Lake Winnisquam towards (left to right) Lake Winnipesaukee, Gunstock Mtn, Lakeport and Laconia