November 16, 2025: Buffleheads

A few more migrating birds found Lake Wicwas a pleasant place to rest during their long travel south for the winter, including this group of Buffleheads.

Bufflehead are really enjoyable to watch this time of year, bringing a flash of brightness and action to the November scene.  

Buffleheads relaxing on Lake Wicwas.

And they seem to be more tranquil than many other ducks; they spend many hours just swimming around slowly in formation, occasionally diving for food.  

Six males and two females.

I'll assume this is because they are tired!  Bufflehead migrate at night, leaving precisely at dusk, and sometimes traveling hundreds of miles in a single night. [ref:  Travis Audubon]  This allows them to take advantage of calmer winds and helps them avoid predators.  

But, as you probably noticed, they weren't a uniform flock - for some reason there was a Scaup mixed in with them, though it tended to drift away to fish closer to shore on occasion.

A Lesser Scout hangs out with the Buffleheads

If I've seen a Scaup before it would have been on the ocean, and I didn't know it.  I've not seen one on Wicwas.  I believe this is a Lesser Scaup based on a small corner on the back of its head; the Greater Scaup has a smooth, rounded head.

The squared-off back of the head is barely discernable in this picture.

You can read more about buffleheads in the above link to Travis Audubon.

More signs of the colder temperatures are evident around the lake.

Ice crystals on wintergreen, an evergreen which turns a burgundy color in cold weather.

Radiation cooling and damp ground provide an excellent canvas for Jack Frost to practice his art.

Low bush blueberry

Jack really pays attention to detail.

Beautifully rendered ice crystals.

Other signs of the season were found at the water's edge:

Cat-o-nine Tails

When the cat-o-nine tails start to shred you know winter's near.  We also had our first snowflakes in the air this week, as well as a little graupel that collected on the ground.

Graupel

I've mentioned this interesting form of precipitation before.  It forms when a snowflake floats around inside a cloud containing supercooled water droplets which adhere to the snowflake.  When the growing ice ball gets too heavy, it drops from the cloud to earth.  Here you can see some of the snowflakes as well as the graupel.

November is a transition time between seasons with less activity taking place as everyone prepares for winter, both human and wild.  It makes for a  peaceful time on the lake. 

And a nice reprieve from the busy summer and fall seasons before winter hits, a time for all to relax, reenergize, and enjoy some tranquility along with the buffleheads.

November 9, 2025: In the Hornet's Nest

After a few more cold nights this week I decided it was safe to go back to study the large Bald-faced Hornet nest I found this fall. (see Oct 5 Journal) 

I took it off the tree and sliced it down the center line through the entry door and peeled it open.  I found the internal structure fascinating.

Inside were three tiers of beautifully constructed hexagonal paper combs.  

These aren't honey combs, but rather incubator chambers for larvae.  The hexagonal structure is found throughout nature because it's the most efficient form to maximize volume with the least construction material.  

Though most of the cells were empty, a few had larvae in them that hadn't matured before the cold weather arrived.

A couple of larvae in the comb.

The site iNaturalist has a good description of the life cycle of these members of the yellow jacket family, but I'll give a short summary here.  

The nest is started by a single inseminated queen that overwintered on the ground - the only member of a nest that survives to the next year.  She starts a small nest and raises young until there are enough to take over nest construction and feeding of larvae, at which point the queen dedicates all her time to laying eggs of workers.  The workers expand the nest by chewing up soft wood and bark, combining it with their saliva to create the paper for the cells and the outer protective covering.  When the first tier is full they start on a second and third tier.  The workers also bring food to the larvae in the nest.

In late summer the queen starts to lay fertile male and females eggs.  These will fly from the nest and mate, presumably with insects from a different nest.  The males, as well as the queen and all the workers will die; only a new, fertilized queen will bury into the leaf litter and emerge in the spring to start a new nest.  

If you want a nice little side gig, you can search out and sell these nests.  Dozens have sold on ebay this fall with prices ranging from a couple of dollars up to $300.  Just make sure there are no live animals inside!

This was a windy week in New Hampshire, but there were enough calm times to get out for a paddle.  

It was good to see lots of food sources around the lake for animals to feed on this winter.

Winterberry

Chokeberry

Both of these are important food sources because they last well into the winter months, especially for birds that are fruit-eaters like bluebirds and cedar waxwings.

I also found our young loon, apparently alone on the lake but doing well.  

Spangle is looking quite sharp now.

She may be here several more weeks.  

It's not uncommon to get a nice day or two late into November, but I now appreciate every paddle on the lake like it might be my last for the year.

Our local flock of turkeys continues to be active and visible - and looking quite healthy.

They may be awkward birds, they are pretty.

Turkey's are omnivores, eating just about anything they come across.  Though they are probably mostly eating seeds, we're happy to have them in the garden because they will consume ticks, grubs, and any other insects they find as they scratch around in the leaf litter.

Turkeys make us think of Thanksgiving, and yes, it's November.  But even in Novembernature gives us reasons every day to be grateful.

November 2, 2025: Resilience

A good friend pointed out this birch tree we came upon while walking in the Hamlin Forest a couple of weeks ago.  I was struck by the lesson it provides. 

Nature provides a lesson on resilience.

It had clearly been bent over backwards, but it didn't break.  And it didn't give up growing.  It accepted its new lot in life and sent new limbs skyward toward the sun.  It might not live as long as its friends in the neighborhood as an ice storm or wet, heavy snow may ultimately do it in, but the size of the vertical branches show it's made it a long time already.  It's a good example to follow.

Most of the wasps and hornet from nests discovered this fall have succumbed to the cold by now, but not the bumblebees.  Their thick furry coats keep them warm enough to remain active well into the colder weather.  

This one was working feverishly to collect the last bits of pollen from a still-blooming patch of asters.

I expect the butterflies are also gone for the summer; I never found any monarch chrysalises this year, but the milkweed plants are doing their thing to make sure the monarch larvae will have plenty of leaves to munch on next year, and when they mature, there will be real estate for their pupae.

Milkweed seeds waiting to be carried far and wide by the wind.

We've had regular visitors to the compost pile this summer even though we don't compost meat products.  The assumption has been a raccoon because it started with corn season and the critter's clear favorite is corncobs which are pulled out of the pile and stripped clean of every last bit of corn husk. This week I set the trail camera to confirm the assumption. 

Old Rocky on the compost pile.

Unfortunately for Rocky, corn season is over now. He poked around a bit, did find what he was looking for and went on his way.

I also caught a picture of what I assume is mother white-tail and her mostly grown offspring. 

As a reminder, archery and muzzle loader season for deer are underway, and firearms hunting starts November 12th and continues until December 7th.

Despite strong wind and heavy rain which stripped most of our leaves off the trees, there remain a few holdouts. 

The last vestiges of color will be the blueberries and huckleberries growing all around the shores of the lake.  These benevolent plants bestow us with joy from spring to winter and will provide the last bits of color to the world before the gray of November takes over until we get the next burst of beauty with the first winter snow.

November can be a long month at the lake.

Now, a shameless plug for the Lakes Region Symphony Orchestra:  They put on a fabulous concert in Plymouth last night, and if you missed it, your next opportunity is the holiday concert on December 6th and 7th with performances at the Colonial Theater in Laconia and the Inter-lakes High School Auditorium in Meredith.  We have a fantastic vocalist singing holiday classics made famous by the likes of Barbra Streisand as well as classical favorites including Sleigh Ride and selections from the Nutcracker.  I hope you can make it!

October 26, 2025: Pied-billed Grebe

I saw a new bird on Lake Wicwas this week:  A Pied-billed Grebe.

Pied-billed Grebe  (Podilymbus podiceps)

It was solitary, and having good success fishing all by itself in the lake, staying and diving for quite a while.  I had to look it up as it wasn't a bird I recognized, but after identifying it I realized I had seen this bird once before - on the coast of Virginia.  Pied-billed grebes breed throughout New Hampshire, but I'd never seen one here.  They are built like a loon with legs far back on their body which make them excellent swimmers, and like loons, very awkward when walking on land.  For that reason they spend almost their entire life in water - even when nesting.  

Unlike our Common Loon, this grebe builds a floating nest, a bowl-shaped nest on a floating mat of vegetation either by constructing a raft from stems of aquatic plants, or maybe even on top of lily pads.  Also like loons, once the chicks hatch they ride on their parent's back for safety.  The pied-billed has a wide range of food sources with crayfish being their primary food, but they also eat fish, snails, mussels, crabs, frogs, leeches, and insects.  [Ref: Cornell Lab of Ornithology]  Unlike loons, these grebes may lay a brood of up to ten eggs.  Here's a photo of a nest from the Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance.

Pied-billed Grebe nest with ten eggs.  Photo by James Otto.

I saw another uncommon bird on Lake Wicwas a couple of weeks ago:

A Solitary Sandpiper perches on top of a docked boat on Wicwas.

The solitary sandpiper breeds in boreal forests in Canada, so this one picked Wicwas as a nice rest stop on its way to Central or South America for the winter.  We'll soon be seeing more migrating birds making stopovers at Wicwas.

Leaves are falling fast now in the Lakes Region and the open branches continue to reveal new sights I hadn't noticed before.  This week I saw this huge American Beech tree a dozen yards off the trail to Crockett's Ledge in the Hamlin Forest.  

It seems healthy, even with that six foot crack running up the trunk and an enormous cavity inside.  The opening was large enough to put my hand in and take pictures looking both up and down inside the trunk.

The bottom of the cavity inside the beech.

Looking skywards

Fortunately, there were no signs of animal life in there.  I don't think I've seen the inside of a standing tree before!

Farther up towards the White Mountain Ledge I noticed a hemlock tree with a long strip of bark blown off from being struck by lightening.

A long strip of blown off bark where electrical heating
explosively boiled the moisture under the bark.

When lightning strikes a tree the electrical current passes through the cambium under the bark to reach the ground because the live, wet wood is a good electrical conductor.  The heat generated by the current vaporizes the water under the bark which expands violently and blows the bark right off the tree.

Rotting wood indicates this is old lightning scar.

On the trail it was evident that many of the leaves were no longer on the trees, especially the maples.

The beech, oak, and aspen hold on to their leaves a bit longer so there was still some color looking north towards the white mountains.

I could only see as far as Mt. Osceola on Friday.

Closing on a non-nature note, the boat ramp for Lake Wicwas got its rebuild this week.  

There are nine concrete slabs anchored together going out over 20 feet into the water; one is visible as the lake level is still down a few inches.

Hopefully the new design will reduce erosion and sedimentation going into the lake.  

Silt fencing protected the water during construction.

It's worth noting that going into the last week of October, we've still only had one day where the temperature has dropped below freezing and flowers are still blooming.

Daisies at my parents house.

And people are still out enjoying the fall weather on the water.

I hope you're able to take advantage of the quiet season around the lakes!