May 20, 2014

Slowly but surely it's looking like spring around here.  We had a lot of rain yesterday as you can see by the rain gauge.  We got most of that over night.

Here are two pictures to compare the difference that much rain makes in the pond.  I took the first picture on Sunday, the second one on Tuesday.

I've been seeing some wildflowers and mushrooms, although these aren't edible.  Soon the yummy oyster mushrooms should be popping out.    

The other day when I was sitting in my blind I saw a couple turtles sunning themselves along the edge.  All of a sudden something goes swimming by them!  Whoa!  Are the beavers back?  No...it was a muskrat.

They're kinda ugly critters, but they do have nice fur and are still trapped around here.

Another sign of spring is seeing all the lonely and confused yearling deer.  This poor thing is so tiny, but she's a real trooper to have survived the cold and snow of last winter.  Her mama should be having new fawns any day now.  This little one was right up by the cabin.  I think she was hoping someone would come out with a bucket of corn for her.  Hint hint....maybe later this afternoon.

And finally the grass is getting green and there are leaves growing on some of the trees!  Yay!  

Taking the Good with the Bad

Some examples of what I’m talking about.  Rain can be good and bad.  This is what the pond looked like on Tuesday, after receiving more than 5 inches of rain in less than 12 hours.  This is what it looked like after all that water caused the hole in the damn to become even larger.  And then there’s good and bad animal sightings.  I showed you pictures of the little wolf pup we saw out on the road the other day.  Well… when I finally took the card out of the trail cam, I wasn’t happy to see this visitor.  Talk about posing for the camera!  This is an adult wolf and it’s the first time we’ve gotten a picture of one…and it’s right in front of the cabin! Getting back to the rain we received the other day.  We don’t have a rain gauge, but our friend Randy who lives only a couple miles away said his rain gauge that holds 5” was full!  All that rain is good for the lakes and groundwater, but not so good for the already bad roads around here.  There were washouts on main roads, secondary ones and on most of our favorite dirt roads too.Notice the butterfly on the sign.  I wonder if they’re attracted to the color of all the road closed signs?  Well, there’s plenty of them around.  This was on our road Tuesday night, but it’s open now. I sat in my blind this morning, not expecting to see a lot with so much of the water gone.  But I was wrong.   Fish, frogs and bugs are easy pickin’s for the herons and other birds.  The kingfisher stopped for a rest right in front of me!  Finally a decent picture of one of my favorite pond birds.  But the decoy isn’t looking so good anymore.  Poor thing, for all it’s been through in the past year, now it’s just another mud duck.  It was frozen in the pond last winter and this spring I saw an eagle pecking at the decoy’s head that was just showing through the snow.

From my little blind

I have my little camo blind set up on the hillside over looking the pond and have spent many enjoyable hours in it. 

Up until yesterday, any wildlife action has been too far away for my camera to do it justice. I’ve taken lots of pictures, cropped them and done whatever I could to make them look okay, never being completely satisfied with the results.  But finally, my timing was right.  Well, kinda. 

 

It was a bright sunny day, around 11:00 and I was sitting in my blind.  Sometimes I don’t even care if the lighting is good or bad…I enjoy sitting out there with my camera and binoculars.  I scanned the edge of the pond, saw the little merganser swimming around, but not much else was happening. Then some movement caught my eye, right down in front of me!  Holy crap!  It’s a green heron and there’s nothing in front of it and omg, let’s see if I can get focused in on it before I scare it away!  Well, green heron was concentrating so hard on catching some fish, it didn’t even notice me taking it’s picture.I sat and watched it for about an hour and for once I was fairly happy with my pictures.  I know, they’re nothing like the ones from fancy cameras, but I like my camera.  I know I can’t expect great pictures of things unless they’re just a little closer than all the way across the pond like this one.  Although I did get quite a few things in this one picture.  A mallard, a merganser, a great blue heron flying through and a wood duck house.  I’d like a new camera someday, but not yet. 

Happy Earth Day!

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I know it’s been awhile since I’ve updated and the reason is there hasn’t been much happening around here.  We’ve seen quite a few different birds this spring and the deer swing by each night, along with a raccoon or two.  But we haven’t seen any bear, bobcats or other exciting animals yet.  I should say, I haven’t seen any bear yet.  Jim was out looking for sheds (antlers from deer) the other day and saw a young bear.  They looked at each other and the bear turned and walked down a little hill and disappeared into the woods.  He also saw where it denned last winter.
 
The other day we saw this porcupine along the side of the road.  Apparently he didn’t want me to see his face, but seeing this side of him is a reminder why I was happy I was in the truck when I took his picture.
This week I set up my little blind so I can try to get some pictures without scaring everything away.  The beavers are no longer out there but there’s still quite a bit of water.  This week we’ve seen ducks, herons, geese and some other long legged waders out there.  Here’s a picture of my blind and the view from it.


I really enjoy sitting out there…as long as it’s not too cold and windy.  This morning I was watching some hooded mergansers and got a fairly good picture of two of them.  Just as I was leaving I saw an eagle fly over.  I don’t know if I scared it off or if it was just a coincidence that it was flying over at that time.  It would’ve been nice if I had known it was around.
Things are still very brown around here, but one of these days, I’m sure spring will happen.  The “s” word (and I don’t mean “s” as in spring or showers) is still being used by the weather people.  Shame on them! 

Spring in the Northland - Part II

Yesterday I saw something I'd never seen before. I just happened to look out the window and there were a couple deer coming across the ice on the pond. In my opinion, one was way too close to open water, but I figured it knew where it was going. Nope. All of a sudden, it's in the water and without missing a beat, it jumped up on the ice and kept on heading this way.  You can see the little deer on the right is all wet from it's chilly dip in the pond.

A little while later two more were coming across.  These stayed more towards the middle of the pond, but one of them went partly through.  We're hoping they've learned the short cut is not the way to go anymore.  If you look way over on the left side of this picture you can see the second pair walking across the ice.

We have to head back home today for a funeral this weekend, but we'll be back ASAP.

Spring in the Northland – Part I

Even though there’s still snow on the ground and ice on the pond there’s been lots of action around here.  On Sunday morning we saw an eagle land on the ice and watched it try to grab something that was frozen in..  I took pictures from inside the cabin.  From past experience I know if I want a picture, take it now, don’t go outside because it just scares the birds or animals away.At the time I didn’t know what the eagle was trying to get, but now that the ice has melted some, we can see this is the head of a duck decoy we left out there last fall. 

Out on a drive on Sunday we saw this proud grouse strutting across the road.  And of course the deer come by here a couple times each day to see if there’s any corn or sunflowers for them to snack on.  This was from rainy Sunday.In the past we’ve seen an occasional otter swimming around in the pond.  This is the first year we’ve seen three of them and were able to watch them play around on the ice.  Otters know how to have fun and they seem to be goofing off most of the time…except if other critters are around.  These two were keeping an eye on me while I was keeping an eye on them. This one wasn’t happy to see a pair of great blue herons land on the ice near their open water. (Also taken from inside the cabin.  Herons have eyesight as good as eagles.)
Jim got this picture of the otters (we’re calling them “The Three Amigos”) and one of the three beavers.  We have the trail cam running and so far only deer and a raccoon have gotten their pictures taken.  Stay tuned, spring has just started up here.

Didn’t Go Postal

Yesterday Molly and I came back home and left the Great White Hunter to fend for himself.  Tomorrow is the official start of deer hunting in Wisconsin.  It’s the one weekend I do not like being at the cabin.  I like coming back home and going to the Christmas craft shows and spending the day with my friend Connie.

Anyway, yesterday I stopped at the Post Office to pick up the mail that was being held and there with all the bills, catalogs and other junk mail was a Return to Sender package.  It was a set of pins for one of my Etsy buyers.  So I contacted her, told her what happened and asked for her correct address.  She answers back saying it happens all the time.  Her address and the one I used is 101 University Drive.  She said the Postal carriers try to deliver it to 1001 or 4001 University Drivem addresses that don’t even exist.  So to avoid the risk of this happening again, she gave me the address of her aunt & uncle in an entirely different state and asked me to send it there.

So I put the package in another envelope, with a new address label and go to the Post Office to mail it out again.  I told the whole story to the Postal lady, saying I didn’t think I should have to pay again, when my original package had a valid address on it.  She agreed and the USPS paid to resend my package.   Small victory for me!  

I guess I haven’t undated this since the big snow last Saturday.  Man, did it ever come down!  It started out as rain, then turned to slush and finally heavy snow that got pasted onto everything in it’s path.  Here’s before and after pictures of the pond.  Yeah, I know “it’s so pretty”!

This one has some frost on the edges and a thin layer of ice.

This one has lots of snow on everything, the layer of ice is gone, but there was still more snow coming.   Total for this storm was 6-8 inches.

Four days later the snow was still hanging.  Lots of branches broke from the weight of the snow.  Even whole trees snapped and fell onto the road.  It was a mess!

It was nice to see green grass when I got back home.

Sooner or Later…

It had to happen.  Yes, we saw our first snowflakes of the season on Wednesday.  Nothing serious, compared to the wind and rain that pounded the country this week.  It’s been ugly here for days.  Today is the first day since Saturday that it hasn’t rained.  It’s cool and windy, but at least that may help dry things out a bit. 

Yesterday we took a drive down our road and in a 9 mile stretch, there was high water running over the road in 5 different spots.   The wind caused lots of trees to snap and of course some landed on the road.  The first one Jim was able to drag off, but the next one was reason enough to turn around and take a different route.This bridge got wiped out by high water a few years ago.  If it hadn’t blown out then, it probably would’ve happened in this storm.The dam down by the pond is still holding, but there’s lots of water going over the top.    I took this picture of the pond this morning and I thought I’d go back and compare it to one I took in April.  Oh ya, the pond is lots bigger now.

October 2010  April 2010 The deer didn’t wait for the cover of darkness to come in for a snack yesterday.  They’ve had a rough couple of days too.

Lodge Cam Update – The Finale

Today Jim rowed out and brought back the Lodge Cam.  We got a few more pictures of the busy beavers, but that’s enough for this year.  Next year we’ll put it back out there but first we’ll need to do some modifications so it doesn’t get too much bird poop on it.  Since last Friday there were only a few pictures worth keeping.  (Again, ignore the time and date on these pictures.)

These busy beavers do most of their work at night and sleep during the day.  We see them cruising around just before dark and for about an hour in the morning. 

MissBeth asked me what happens when the water freezes.  I’ll try to explain how these beavers will survive during the winter.  They build the lodge in fairly shallow water and build a food bank of sticks around the outside.  The ends of the sticks will hang below the ice so they’ll be able to munch on them during the long winter.  The lodge sits above the ice and they’re able to swim around under it and cuddle up inside so they’re not always in the water.  I think they also move around outside the lodge if the snow isn’t too deep.  This is the first year since we’ve had the cabin that beavers will be living out there all winter.   

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The nice sunny weather last week brought out some not so nice critters.  This is a deer tick…the kind that can cause Lyme’s Disease.  They really are small and easy to overlook. 
This is just a harmless garter snake, but still, snakes make me stop in my tracks. 

Last night while watching the Badgers play Ohio State we saw a real badger cross the lawn.  Too bad the trail cam didn’t get a picture of it and really too bad my camera was sitting out in the truck!  Darn it all anyway!