June 29, 2025: Catching up around the Lake

It's always comforting to return to the lake whether I've been away for a day or a month.  The enormity of a place like Alaska dwarfs the entire state of New Hampshire, but this small verdant patch of our planet has a charm that's truly special. How fortunate are we to able drive along a quiet stretch of road and see one of the iconic birds of the Northern Hemisphere incubating it's eggs?  

Many people put seeing a single loon on their life-list.  

This nest is in a good spot to be protected from boat traffic and is far enough off the road to not be bothered by cars.  You can see it at the first opening where you see the lake on Chemung Road when coming from Meredith Center.  Bring a pair of binoculars and scan the small islands in the cove - you won't bother it.

Hopefully this pair has survived the floods and a couple days of record heat this week and is carefully tending one or two viable eggs because it appears the northern-territory pair isn't going to have a nest this year.  I've seen a pair in the northern territory together with no recent signs of nest-building

Perhaps you saw this photo in the Laconia paper:

Assuming we do have a chick or two in a couple of weeks, there will be plenty more challenges for these birds to deal with!

There are other signs of nature to be found on a slow walk along country roads.  This small disturbed area caught my eye, and looking closer I found the tell-tale sign of a turtle nest.

An excavated Painted Turtle nest.

Painted turtles clamber out of the lake to find suitable nesting sites in soft gravel, sometimes having to travel long distances especially when the riparian area around a lake or stream has been developed.  They often find the first suitable spot along the shoulder of a road - which presents a couple of problems.  One is obvious from the number of squashed turtles in roads from car tires.  The other is the lack of protective cover as raccoons, fox, skunk, and crows also travel the roads looking for road kill.  When any of these come across a turtle nest they dig right because fresh turtle eggs, like chicken eggs, are an excellent source of much needed protein. 

Consumed turtle eggs.

Fortunately, the populations of both turtle species we have in Wicwas (painted turtles and snapping turtles) are strong.  

If you're on or near the water, especially in a small boat, look closely at the aquatic vegetation growing at the shoreline.  Many of our dragonflies and damsel flies are now emerging from their larval stage in the lake and drying out their wings for flight.  

You can find them doing this all summer long early in the morning to dry off nighttime dew.

I led a walk on the Laverack Nature Trail in Meredith Village with the Taylor Community this week.  Many fruiting trees are now in blossom along the boardwalk; we found native dogwood, winterberry, and many others.  

Silky Dogwood

Winterberry

Come fall and winter these provide valuable food for birds.  There are also blueberries with fruit already set; it looks like it might be a good blueberry season.  If you haven't been to the Laverack Trail (or even if you have!) this fully accessible trail is always worth a visit.

Finally, here's one more item from Alaska.  It's a slow motion video of a Tiger Swallowtail butterfly gathering nectar from lilac blossoms.  This is one-quarter actual speed; it was actually working those flowers very quickly.  It's a large file so it may take a minute to load.

After experiencing the untouched expanse of much of Alaska's Denali National Park and Tongass Natural Forest, flying over Boston and Seattle is a stark, almost overwhelming reminder of why we cherish even small pockets of undeveloped nature.  It is far too easy to take for granted all that Lake Wicwas gives us.

June 21, 2020: Summer Flowers are Here

Happy Fathers Day to all the dads out there! 

The summer heat arrived just in time for Father's Day, and the summer flowers are loving it; they're expressing themselves with brilliant colors from all corners of the spectrum.  I will let them speak for themselves.

Orange Hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum)

And the yellow variety (Hieracium caespitosum)

Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) on Linda's Lobelia (not wild)

Bunchberry (Cornus canadensis)

Daises and Lupines

Oxeye Daisey (Leucanthemum vulgare)

Ohio Spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis)

 

Not wild, but pretty

Sheep Laurel (Kalmia angustifolia)

Lupine (Lupinus)

With a customer

Mapleleaf viburnum (Viburnum acerifolium)

I'll mention one concern about the heat:  the loons.  The Bryant Island nest is completely exposed to the sun all day long, and with clear, hot days one after another the loons have had no relief for days on end.  On top of that, with yesterday being the solstice, there's 15 and half hours of sun beating on them each day. The Harris Cove nest has a much better site with a good covering of bushes, but even they must be suffering.   It will be a remarkable parenting effort if either pair can keep their eggs cool enough to be viable.  We'll know in a couple more weeks.  

Until then, dads, granddads, and everyone, know that we are thinking of you even if we can't be with you, and take the time to smell the flowers.

June 10, 2018 - A Chipmunk Epidemic

The season of regeneration is here and new life is flourishing all around us.  I don't need to point out the chipmunk epidemic that's happening this year - they are everywhere, by the dozens, chipping at us from the woods, zipping across the roads, and popping out of every nook and cranny.

Remembering back to last fall, there was a tremendous mast crop including abundant acorns and white pine cones, both valuable food sources for many rodents.  Every chipmunk in New Hampshire must have stuffed its pantry with enough food to support multiple litters of many little 'munks.

The birds are also hatching now, the most visible of course being the Canada geese.

Six little fluff balls out for a swim

They grow quickly - here they are just five days later

Even the week before last I saw a different goose family (is that a gaggle?) crossing Meredith Center Road and the chicks were already over a foot tall.  I always keep my eye open for the wood duck family, which I rarely see, but this year I got lucky.

Seven little wood ducklings, all tucked in behind mom

Amphibians are not very visible in their mating season, but they sure are audible.  On those warm spring nights the lakes are filled with calls of frogs and toads looking for love.  Have you heard a creaky door slowly opening and closing continuously around the lake?  It was probably the mating call of a pickerel frog announcing its availability.

Pickerel frog

You can hear the voice of the pickerel frog inviting a mate over for a visit by clicking here.

Loons are now into their prime nesting season.  Some pairs, including the pair on Pleasant Lake, laid their eggs almost two weeks ago.  Our Wicwas pair has been working on finding a nesting site, but I'm not aware they've settled on a home for the year.  Seeing a pair poking around close to shore is a sure sign they are searching for nesting sites.

They have no other reason to venture close to land as they can dive safely for fish in deep water.

Building up a potential nesting site with one loon on watch

We again have a third loon on the lake, but all seem to be sharing better this year;  we'll see what happens as the summer progresses.  As in previous years, the Loon Preservation Committee has a live loon-cam at a nest on an undisclosed lake in New Hampshire - all we know is that it's within an hour's drive from the Loon Center.  There is a lot of great information on their website, and there are some amazing videos if you look back through this year's video highlights.

A frame from this year's loon-cam

Even the butterflies are procreating;  I caught a couple of Tiger Swallowtails having an intimate moment.

More butterflies are on the way!

June 12, 2016

Summer has just about completely unfolded around the lake;  the greens are approaching their fullest chrolophyl-induced depth.

Crockett's Ledge is back in full summer dress (that's not a speck of dust in the sky - it's a broad-winged hawk)

Of course that doesn't mean everything is summer-like.  The 80 degree temperatures and warm lake of last week have regressed - it was back into the 40's overnight with day-time highs only in the 50's.  We were even treated to a little taste of frozen precipitation one day.

An early summer hailstorm

The fresh green leaves provide sustenance and homes for a wide range of animals, including some that are well adapted to take advantage of what the trees can provide.  I saw these interesting curved spikes in large numbers jutting out of the leaves of a Witch Hazel tree and wondered what they were.

Witch Hazel Horn Galls

I had no idea that they were the homes of tiny aphids (Hormaphis hamamelidis), and are known as horn galls.  I have previously noted Oak Galls which are those round balls one often finds on the forest floor and are caused by Oak Apple Gall Wasp, but I didn't recognize these as the same kind of growth.  Here is a great description of the life process of this aphid by Walter Reeves:

In early spring aphid females hatch from over-wintered eggs and crawl onto the leaf buds.  As the leaves begin to expand the aphids inject chemicals into the leaf tissue which causes a hollow, cone-shaped gall to form.  Aphids live inside the gall, protected from predators and the elements, until they mature.  Three generations occur in a season but only the third includes both male and female aphids. In late summer the final generation lays eggs on the branches of the witchhazel plant.  The following spring the cycle begins again.  [Ref: The Georgia Gardener, http://www.walterreeves.com/landscaping/galls/]

The spring flowers are fading fast;  I saw one lone, faded Lady's Slipper up on the ridge west of the lake, its life extended by a bit higher altitude and the week's cool weather.  But the early summer flowers are happy to take their place in nature's gallery.

Lupine beside the lake

Tiger Swallow Tail on a Rhododendron Blossom

Large Blue Flags blooming in wetlands

Oxeye Daisy in a garden

Although the forest canopy is full, allowing little penetrating light, there was one beam of sunshine finding its way through, perfectly illuminating this spider web right beside the trail.

Spider web with its resident waiting right in the center for a visitor

The owner was kind enough to build beside the trail rather than right across it so the web didn't end up on my face!

One final note:  the wood ducks we were watching earlier in the season (see March 27 post) are now proud parents of a very large family of chicks!  I have seen the brood of tiny fluff balls swimming across the lake twice now, but never close enough for a decent picture, and I have so far resisted the urge to go out and chase them down! 

Wood Duck Brood

It has been difficult to count them, but I think there are 8 to 10 chicks, which is good, because they look like easy targets for that big snapper I saw last week - or a large mouth bass

The loons are not doing as well with their family life.  There are still two pairs on the lake and they are not getting along well, watching each other by day and having loud disagreements over who owns this lake at night.  Neither pair appears to be comfortable enough to try to nest.  We do have confirmation now that one of the loons is the banded female that has been on Lake Wicwas for several years.  The one positive aspect of territorial fights is that it indicates the overall population of loons is growing in the area.  I'll keep you posted on any progress towards homesteading.

June 9, 2013

Get yourself comfortable - with no post last week due to concerts, there's a lot of nature to report on this week!

First, Linda saw a very young fawn!  It was with its mother, and as soon as they saw each other (Linda and the doe that is), the doe hustled her fawn quickly up into the woods to safety.  I believe I saw the same doe the next day in a field, but I didn't go investigating.  It was probably right next to the fawn which was hidden down in the grass, and I didn't want to disturb it.  But the adult was far too patient letting me pass by - without a fawn nearby it would have long since bolted off.  Sorry, no pictures here.

But I did put out the trail camera to see if I could catch a picture.  I was not lucky enough to capture them, but, in the process, I did record two other critters I had never seen in that location before:  a skunk and a coyote:

Stripped Skunk

 

Coyote

The coyote looks as though it may still be losing its winter coat, based on the thick gray fur on its rump.

Skunks have a widely varied diet, but one of their specialties is digging up turtle eggs that have been laid in the ground.  I saw this giant snapping turtle on the road just last week

Snapping Turtle

so maybe the skunk had a good feast on those eggs - I wouldn't complain about that!  I'm glad I didn't come across the skunk on my evening walk!

But now here's another well-defended animal that I did come across this week:

Porcupine

A porcupine!  I've seen them in trees, and in winter on the snow, but I've never seen one just walking along a trail.  It was waddling along in front of me, and when it detected my presence it stopped, turned sideways and looked at me as if to say "what are you doing here?"  

Needless to say, I didn't get any closer.  Porcupines seem to have this attitude of what-me-worry?, knowing that every animal in the forest - save the Fisher Cat - knows to keep its distance.  We know that domestic dogs have forgotten that lesson from their forebears and will come home with a face of quills, but other than that and the fisher, the porcupine just goes about its business.  It continued down the trail, stopping a few more times to check me out, and, eventually deciding it had enough, scurried the best it could off into thicker cover.  I was a little taken aback at just how large it was - it was my first encounter that close with a porcupine.

OK, I warned you, there is a lot of activity in the spring and early summer:  next up was an encounter with a beaver.  Walking along a trail some 50 yards from Lake Wicwas, I heard the report of a beaver alarm, warning of my presence with its tail.  Beaver aren't too dangerous, so I headed towards the lake to see if I could find it.  As I approached the shore, I saw it swimming down the shoreline, and watched it turn back, swim past, and repeat several more loops. 

Beaver

Every few minutes it would slap its tail, making a loud ker-whack sound accompanied by a good size splash.

Beaver Alert

I wondered if it wanted to come up on shore to take a short-cut across the peninsula, and I was thwarting it.  Eventually it went off and swam all the way around....
 

The birds are active also.  I saw a Pileated Woodpecker fly by, stopping at every oak tree to climb up its trunk looking for insects.  We also saw two hawks, Broad Winged Hawks I believe.  First I saw a very large one, followed close behind by a much smaller bird.  At first I thought it was a crow harassing it, but as it came closer it was clear it was another hawk.  It had a wide, curved, and banded tail.  The two of them circled together for a minute before slowly drifting off to the south.  It looked like flying lessons being taught to junior by the professional!

The loons have perhaps not yet laid their eggs, but they are certainly searching out a good nesting site.  We saw them trying out a site at one location, while another loon watcher saw them the same day trying a different site.  Unless there are two pairs?  Very unlikely, and hasn't happened at Wicwas before, but you never know.  Time will tell.  If you see a loon close to shore, or acting strangely, keep away to not endanger its eggs.  It only takes a minute off the next for a predator to gobble up an egg.

OK, we're nearing the end.  Just one insect observation - the butterflys are back and plentful with the flowers out now.  I saw several White Admirals and a few Tiger Swallowtails. 

Tiger Swallowtail

The Tiger Swallowtail hibernates in its chrysalis in the cold New Hampshire winter, and in spring feeds on flower nectar before laying its eggs. 

This particular butterfly either has a defective right wing, or perhaps it hadn't fully pumped its wing to full size after emerging.  Either way, it didn't seem to affect its flight at all.

So that's what's been happening around Lake Wicwas the past week or so.  This coming week, most of the activity will be of the two-wheeled variety.  But remember, you never know who you'll meet around Lake Wicwas!