I saw a new bird on Lake Wicwas this week: A Pied-billed Grebe.
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| 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.
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| Pied-billed Grebe nest with ten eggs. Photo by James Otto. |
I saw another uncommon bird on Lake Wicwas a couple of weeks ago:
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| 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.
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| The bottom of the cavity inside the beech. |
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| 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.
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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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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!