November 24, 2024: How old are our Boulders?

Much of New Hampshire's rugged beauty is the result of glacial activity that took place some 12,000 years ago as the last ice-age retreated.  The Laurentide Ice Sheet, which was over two miles thick at its peak, retreated north over thousands of years, with its last remnants in New Hampshire melting approximately 10,000 years ago, but the specific time frame of its final demise here is uncertain.  

As the glacier pushed south from the artic it cut deep gouges which formed many of our lakes, and sliced off parts of mountains forming ledges with fine views.  It also scoured off soil and dragged and rolled large chunks of rock with it in a continental-size rock tumbler.  As the planet warmed, less snow fell, the glacier slowed its movement, then stopped.  As it melted it left those boulders wherever they were at the time, sometimes far from their original formation.  These are know as glacial erratics and  can be found throughout much of New Hampshire, including all around Lake Wicwas.

An erratic beside the Arbutus Hill Trail in Hamlin.

A carefully balanced boulder, delicately placed by the glacier.

The most famous erratic in New Hampshire is the Madison Boulder which is as big as a house.

Madison Boulder.   White Mountains New Hampshire photo.

The largest erratic I've found in Meredith is in Hamlin, right beside the Yellow Trail to Crockett's Ledge.  If you hiked that trail you've surely noticed it.

This is right at the junction of the two Yellow Trails heading up to Crockett's Ledge.

A professor at Plymouth State University, Professor Simon Pendleton, and one his students, are studying glacial history and they're using these glacial boulders to determine more accurately just when the last glacier retreated north through the Lakes Region.  Prof. Pendleton has identified a small number of boulders in the Hamlin Town Forest to study as part of his research.  Each boulder was selected based on criteria that makes it most suitable for testing, and the stewards of the Town Forest worked with Prof. Simon on the selection process and approved the rocks for sampling.

One of the boulders selected for research.

The dating process involves chipping off a small piece of the boulder to bring it to the lab for testing.  The testing process is long and detailed, but involves crushing the stone to a fine dust, separating the small amount of beryllium within the rock, and then analyzing the beryllium for a specific isotope which is created by cosmic-rays from the sun.  By measuring the amount of this isotope they will know how long the boulder has been exposed to sun, thus providing a date for when the glacier melted which left the boulder exposed to the suns cosmic-rays.  For those interested, you can learn more about beryllium-10 Cosmic-Ray Exposure Testing here.

Of course, this isn't actually how old the rock is - the White Mountains were formed 100-120 million years ago - but it will give us a better idea of when the last ice sheet left the Lakes Region and allowed our current fauna and flora to attain a foothold.  This data will also help us understand how our planet and its present-day glaciers will behave in our current warming climate, as well as the impact it will have on Earth's existing inhabitants.

It will takes weeks to process the samples, and then many more to analyze and interpret the data, but when the results are published I'll report them here.  Professor Pendleton has also offered to give a presentation on the results, and lead a guided tour to the testing sites in the Hamlin Town Forest to show us the specific boulders tested, talk more about the testing and its significance, and let us know how long ago you would have been standing at the edge of a glacier.

Moving forward in time a hundred or so centuries, let's see some elements of that renewal of life that have survived.  This week a couple of female Common Mergansers spent a rainy day on the lake fishing.

It makes me wonder if the reason we haven't seen many migratory ducks since the Wood Ducks early on is because we've had such good weather.  Perhaps they only stop by the Lakes Region when weather is poor and they want a short day of travel.  

I've also had some fun, though fleeting glimpses of deer, mink, and otter.  The otters numbered three, and were out frolicking in the lake as they made their way from one shore to another.  Hopefully there will soon tracks in the snow to follow their path.  The mink I saw was swimming right against the shoreline, hopping up onto land here and there to follow a scent or something else of interest, then right back into the lake.  No picture of him either, but here's one from a similar scene a few years ago.

Mink are just one of the thousands of creatures that have returned and survived for all these years since the area was swept clean of life thousands of years ago.

An AI generated image of New Hampshire shortly after the Laurentide Ice Sheet retreated.

We can be thankful it will be long time before North America is swept clean again.

Happy Thanksgiving!  

November 17, 2024: Reindeer on the Mountain

 Lichen, that is, Reindeer Lichen.

Reindeer Lichen (Cladonia rangiferina)

Hiking along the historic Algonquin Trail from Sandwich Notch to Black Mountain, I came across the most lush community of Reindeer Lichen I've ever seen.  It was one of the largest, and certainly the softest, greenest crop I've found.

This lush growth near the summit of Black Mountain must be the result of several factors coming together, especially considering how dry our summer has been.  Reindeer Lichen is a symbiotic hybrid of fungi and cyanobacteria, often growing on north-facing granite slabs which provide the minerals and limited sun they prefer.  The fungi and the bacteria (or algae) provide their partner with the nutrients the other can't produce on its own.  But they both also need water, and I'm guessing the geography around Black Mountain is very efficient at capturing moisture rising up from the valley below, condensing it into clouds and fog that is usable by the lichen.  

A lush growth of Reindeer Lichen.

We have Reindeer Lichen around Lake Wicwas and you can see a large community of it at the White Mountain Ledge in the Hamlin Town Forest.  Like most patches I've seen, the lichen at the White Mountain Ledge is gray in color and quite dry and brittle, which is one reason it's important to not step on it as the fragile stems will break off, destroying years of growth in a rather unhospitable environment.  This lichen grows at a rate of about 1/4 inch per year.  

Evidence of the lack of rain was evident by the dry stream beds along the trail.

Even crossing streams with water didn't even require much of rock-hop.

Another find on granite right in the center of the trail was weasel scat.  

That sample looked like it was only a day or two old, but another looked very fresh, probably left that morning.

This scat appears to have leaves in it.

The mountains are pretty empty this time of year so I guess the weasels can go wherever they want.  I saw no other people on my hike and heard only a couple of Blue Jays and Chickadees that were annoyed by my presence on their mountain.  I also heard and saw one lone raven flying along the thermals rising up from the south-facing ledges of Black Mountain which were warming in the morning sun.  As it flew it made a short musical call that sounded like water drops falling into a well.

If you're curious where Black Mountain is, it is readily seen from many viewpoints around Meredith including the White Mountain Ledge, the viewpoint from the Yellow Trail near the clearing by Wicwood Shores Rd, and even driving down Route 3 into Meredith Village.

Black Mountain in winter as seen from the White Mountain Ledge.

While hiking silently along the ancient, time-worn Algonquin Trail, I found myself thinking again and again how I was walking a path laid out thousands of years ago by the indigenous people of N'dakina, wondering how many feet have traversed this path over the millennia.

The Algonquin Trail as it departs from Sandwich Notch.

It was quiet at Lake Wicwas too, without a single duck sighting.  About all I have to offer is this deer scrape right in the trail.

Like weasels leaving scat in obvious places, a buck will scrape down to bare soil and leave its scent to let all the other deer know that it has claimed this particular patch of the forest - and all the does that live in it!

The beavers did come back to finish removing the branch on that beech tree they felled last week.

Last week.

This week.

They took the branch away, along with three other small trees beside it.

Those beavers sure are efficient loggers.

I also came across a couple of trees that were felled by the wind in one of our recent winds storms.

It's always interesting to examine the root structure you don't usually see, as well as all the soil and rocks wrapped up in it.

How often do you get to see the underside of a tree?

So it's a quiet time here waiting for winter to arrive.  There was no snow in the notch, but soon Sandwich Notch Road will be closed and the Algonquin Trail to Black Mountain will be inaccessible except by ski and snowmobile.

Just a trace of snow at higher elevation.

It was nice to get one last trip through the notch before winter settles in.

November 10, 2024: Cotton Candy Ice

It's been twelve years since I last saw these interesting ice formations, so long that I didn't recognize what they were.

I thought it was some kind of fungus until I reached down and touched one and it just crumbled in my fingers.  I then realized they were rime ice, like what forms on trees and structures on the top of mountains.  It occurs when super-cooled water vapor in the atmosphere bumps against a surface that's also below freezing, causing the moisture to change phase directly from a gas to a solid.  On mountains, it's clouds that cause rime ice and they often grow sideways in the direction of the wind.  

Rime Ice on the summit of Mt. Moosilauke.

The formations I saw this week were on stalks of plants less than two inches high.  My theory is that moisture in the warm, wet soil evaporated into the air, cooled to below freezing, and when it came in contact with the stalk which was also below freezing, it made the two-phase-change jump to a solid.  

The air must have been very still so it gently rotated around the stalk and grew into those neat circular patterns.  

They are tiny, and only formed on certain stems.

There's probably a scientific term for it, but I'll call it Cotton Candy Rime.  I noticed the cotton candy while admiring Jack Frost's handiwork with more typical ice crystals, the type I see every year but still find to be exquisite examples of crystalline structure.

On to the wildlife side of nature this week, the wood duck migration has slowed considerably, and the first flocks of migrating diving ducks appeared.  

Ring-necked Ducks

Like the Wood Ducks, Ring-necked Ducks like early mornings and are hard to photograph, but there were a dozen of them one morning.

One of the last groups of Wood Ducks did demonstrate how they are able to disappear so well when I witnessed them sneaking out from under low-hanging hemlock branches where they must have tucked themselves in and were totally concealed.

Look closely, there are a couple still right up against shore in the dark.

I also saw a couple of male Hooded Mergansers courting a single female in Double-dammed Pond at Hamlin, but they were too far away to get a good picture.

There's one.

Beaver activity is notable all around the lake - up at the Hamlin Town Forest, along Chemung Road, even right on our property, including this beech tree which they cut down and are in the process of gnawing off the branches to take away to their lodge.

Beavers harvesting winter food, bare branches on the trees, gray skies above, and cotton candy down below.  It's November at the lake.

November 3, 2024: Autumn Visitors

We were treated to a couple of fall visitors this week.   The first was this young bobcat that snuck by the house in search of a mid-afternoon snack. 

On the Prowl.

It crept along the path through the blueberry bushes where the chipmunks and sparrows collect seeds on the ground. 

Finding no prospects there, it walked up to the corner of the house under the deck and waited a long time, listening to all the tasty sounds in the air:  birds singing, chipmunks chipping, squirrels rustling the dry oak leaves.  Being primarily ambush hunters, bobcats have a lot more patience than I do - I gave up watching before I saw if an unsuspecting prey put itself into a position where the cat thought it could make at attempt at it. 

It's hard to tell without a frame of reference, but this bobcat was much smaller than even a mature female, so I'm pretty sure it's one of this year's litter.  I've seen a young bobcat still with its mother as late as December so seeing this one out hunting on its own and looking healthy is a good sign its mother taught it well.  

The next visitors were a pair of deer that were grazing under the tall Red Oaks, greedily gobbling up the heavy load of acorns dropped on the forest floor this year.

Sibling No. 1

Sibling No. 2

The excellent acorn crop will provide sustenance for many animals, likely resulting in healthy populations of everything from squirrels to turkey to deer next year.  

These animals and others that don't head south or hibernate are growing their warm winter coats at this point even though they didn't need them this week as a warm air mass settled in for most of the week.  Thursday was anything but a clear fall day.  

The view from the Blueberry Ledge Trail on Mt. Whiteface.

On the hike up Mt. Whiteface I recognized this red moss from my recent visit to the Philbrick Bog.  

Sphagnum Moss

Though far removed from the geography of a bog, this high elevation area of dense spruce trees has the same properties of wet, acidic, and low nutrient soil.  I probably wouldn't have noticed it if not for its red color and the fact I had just seen it in the bog.  I love the way multiple plants share the same piece land as much as I do the fabulous colors of nature.

Sphagnum moss, Haircap moss, and Eastern Hemlock all sharing the land.

At a lower elevation of the mountain, this large, bright fungus growing ten feet off the trail on the base of a tree caught the corner of my eye. 

There are several different fungi that have a similar look, one of which is called a Turkey Tail fungus (another is called False-turkey Tail), both named for their similar appearance to the tail of our well known Thanksgiving fowl.  

Cornell Lab of Ornithology photo.

Finally, a quick update on our Wood Thrush that came through New Hampshire and was picked up by the tracking station on Red Hill on September 14th.  The thrush has made its way as far south as Georgia where it was last detected on October 8th.  

The path of Wood Thrush #55768.

Wood Thrushes may overwinter in Florida (or go on to Cuba or South America), so it may be stationary now until spring comes.  We can continue to watch for it here, hoping it will return in the spring.  Until then, we'll enjoy the last vestiges of fall.

Milkweed pods prepare to disperse their seeds for next year's crop.