more early birding...

doing point, species counts with dr. reitsma! it was another "just like christmas, only different," morning--i woke up a quarter to four and decided i would pedal over to the town forest and meet lenny. first breakfast in the tank and tea in the thermos, i switched on the bike lights and strobed away. i made it to the back entrance on switch road before lenny and christian so i ducked through the gate and watched a few birds on my own. a huge splash announced a 'monster' beaver at the same time the professor pulled up. christian got out and i got in; he was headed into the nature area and we were going back to lenny and denise's acres for the point count.

point counts are pretty straight forward, what happens is you go out and stand in an established spot, look and listen*--but mostly listen. len does back to back five minute stints, recording bird species and location--direction the call came from. it sounds a bit ho-hum for a non-birder wishing they were back in bed considering it was before 6:00 on a saturday morning. surprisingly, there is quite a flurry of activity in the short time you stand still with your ears 'perked' up. here is a series of lenny, counting at six of the different points we visited.

having spent time in my youth working at a factory printing sears catalogue, i have lost hearing range and can barely detect the higher buzzes, chips, and chirps of many of the warbler species that len works with and was now hearing--black throated blue, nashville, magnolia, canada, blackburnian were all notes on a page rather than in my ears. i did hear a woodpecker, a sapsucker because it's the only peck, peck, peck that slows down as it goes. american robin, phoebe, blue jay, common yellow throat, red eyed vireo, crow, morning dove, a turkey's gobbles, and an oven bird's teacher, teacher, teacher. i actually see one of those little brown forest thrushes as we are about to leave site #1. less than ten feet away lenny stops and points to the ground at a small mound of leaves with a hole about the size of a golf ball through which i can see at least three eggs. it looks just like a little beehive oven, no wonder the bird got that name.


now and again i leave lenny standing and counting as i go off listening and looking at what i can hear and things i can see. i hunt up the super bright scarlet tanager,  singing away at the tippy top of a large pine tree. i photograph some lady slipper orchids and an interesting line of mushrooms growing along where a large oak limb had fallen. i look into a vernal pool with a mass of wood frog tadpoles wriggling just under the surface. lenny sends me off to find the clutch of woodpecker young he hears peeping away in a nearby tree cavity. we walk past a sheep skeleton with dozens of sow or pill bugs (thank you hannah broadley for looking at them closely) foraging over the vertebrae and skull for the last scraps of cartilage.





there is so much going on in a forest. even though i am not able to hear it all and i am certain i only see a fraction, it makes me feel rich to be out here observing what i can. being aware of ones environment is something i have long pushed in school and out. as i type, i take a binocular break to watch a red squirrel scramble about the trees along the stone wall beyond the screen door. outdoor things seem to encourage my tendency toward adhd...there is so much going on period.


*speaking of listening, the front door was open to the porch and as i sipped my tea and typed, i heard a lot more chirping than usual from the active robin nest up in the rafters. through the window over the kitchen cutting board i saw why. a broadwing hawk landed on the rafter plate over on the wood shed with the male robin harassing it. it didn't stay too long before being chased off down the drive. i thought it might land in a tree out front so i got up to look. no such 'luck' today, at least for the hawk, the robins had successfully protected the eggs in the nest from being broadwing breakfast.

which reminds me, i could go for a 2nd breakfast...

the early bird...

catches something, but it was far too wet for worms. just before i headed off to bed thursday night, i called lenny to tell him the latest on running school field trips out to the bear pond natural area. i thought it might be possible to get together with him on friday. he suggested i meet him and christian and do a bit of bird banding. "meet us at the pull off at 5:30!"

the decoy...

like i have said before, i get up early, so i agreed right off. when i pulled over, with my bike lights strobing, he and his grad student, christian, were a bit surprised. i changed into boots and followed them into the foggy, dim woods. we put up our first set, a few hundred yards along the path. almost as soon as lenny walked away from turning on his i pod to play the canada warbler call beneath a decoy warbler he had fastened onto a bush, an unbanded male flew into the mist net. (pam says, "that's so sneaky!") before we were even done banding the first male and taking down the biometrics, we had a female in the net. things went fairly smoothly and quickly given we had three pairs of hands to operate with.

lenny, male canada warbler, and me

canada warbler and christian

we set the net up about four more times with equally pleasing results, capturing four more unbanded CAWA--ornithologist code for canada warblers--and two special prizes, warblers with geolocator devices (this site shows an example of those devices) on their backs! the trick with these miniature electronic trackers is the birds they ride on have to be recaptured to retrieve the tracker and read the data. attached to the bird one year, when caught again the a year later, the migratory history of that bird is captured. the canada warbler is a long distance migrator, wintering in the southern most regions of central america and the northern most parts of south america.






chasing the last 'geo' bird, we splashed across the beaver dam and through the drainage area several more times. we ended up netting one more unbanded male CAWA, but not red over yellow. it was getting sunny out and on toward 9:00 so we pulled in a last set without getting a bird and headed out toward rt 4. at one point we passed a really cool burl that had started to be hollowed out by something. christian snapped this picture for me a few days later. turns out he and lenny tried fairly hard to get the male with the locator they had spotted earlier, but ended up only capturing several more unbanded males.

i like to think that somewhere out there, a male CAWA with a geolocator is laughing at us! "ha ha ha"

bug season...

in western maine--headnet recommended! i fastened my front fork to the mount in the back of the truck and made a quick check to be sure i had packed my bike shoes. the last time i drove off for a ride i had to turn around and fetch them. all in, i set off for kevin's over in west brownfield maine. what i didn't notice, were bugs. a couple hours later as i pulled into kevin and mariel's driveway, a cloud of black flies wafted through the window and gathered about my head. i had to close the window to even attempt to gather things for the dash inside.

mariel was home mixing up a wheelbarrow full of potting soil and moo-doo to start dividing her transplants. it was pretty obvious that working outside was going to be way too buggy without a headnet. so, like any dedicated maine gardener, she filled a five gallon bucket with her mix, headed inside, and emptied half of it into the kitchen sink! "...we'll have to clean this up before kevin gets home to make dinner..." with an attitude like that, how could i not pitch in and help.

we were basically ready and a pizza dinner was prepped, cooked, and set on the table in fine fashion. i got in a visit with 4/5 of the feider-sullivans, all save for seamus, who lives and works out in san francisco. owen has grown two or three feet since i saw him at popham beach last july. clayton has found a yurt to live in while he works landscaping and plans his next long trek--he has now finished both the appalachian trail and pacific crest trail--that's just shy of 5000 miles, on foot! mariel is growing plants like mad and wants to actually set up a nursery in a green house. kevin is working three days a week at a bike shop in n. conway. life seems pretty good.

friday morning, the dishes done and our panniers packed, kevin and i set off to pedal to the amc cold river camp up in chatham new hampshire. we headed north towards fryeburg where we would pick up 113 and continue north towards evan's notch. the road actually crosses back and forth from maine into new hampshire several times as it winds its way toward gilead me on rt 2, just east of shelburne nh. it was a great day to be riding, with little wind and somewhere in the 60's temperature wise. i tried to keep up kevin's faster cadence, but for some reason found myself pushing higher gears at lower rpms most of the way. old habits die hard--i just hope my knees don't give out early.

we pulled into the amc camp about twenty five miles and two hours after leaving kevin's. after arranging for a cabin kevin and i pitched right in to helping schlep dinning hall tables and chairs. the whole reason we were there was to open the camp for the season. moving everything out of storage, scrubbing walls, clearing paths, putting up fixtures--even a play structure--gave us plenty to do for right through sat, about 2 o'clock. there was a bit of time for fun and the pinkham crew took advantage of it, atop some of the bikes we rolled out of the rec center...

after working in the sun for a bit of the afternoon, three of us took off down to the cold river for a dip. i snapped a picture of billy buffum resting up on a rock.

after a bit of rest we decided to hike up to the ledges on little deer hill just east of the river. i forgot i had my camera until after we passed a really cool stone wall climbing up along the ledge trail. we stopped to look out once and i got an expanded 'selfie'...

the smiles on our faces are genuine and attest to billy's talk as we hiked about the 'being present in the moment' philosophy of eckhart tolle.  some moments in life remind me how privileged i am to have dear friends, my health, all the stuff that makes for moments like these. i have been reading joe kurmaskie's biking book riding outside the lines and keep coming back to one particular story, "you make your own luck". my friend ken and i talked about this just the other day and he is convinced, as kurmaskie comes to be, that this is not at all the case. in fact he finishes the story with the line "luck's what happens when god has his back turned." the story is a good one. so was this hike.

not that you can tell, but the trail was quite steep, complete with signs 'not recommended for decent'. i got a sweet vision of a foot of snow on the ground making for one hell of a fine ski run! maybe i was just lamenting the lack of skiing this past season. seriously though, there seemed to be some hot potential, if we just got lots of snow. that is possible in the north country, and when that happens i told kevin i would pick him up and we would give it a shot. it was in the plan for last winter for us to ski the 4000 footers in new hampshire--maybe next year...i can only hope.







we got to bed at a decent hour after hanging out on the porch and reminiscing about our pinkham days and life after. one of the reasons we came to cold river was to surprise ed parson's--the fourth 'pinkham weenie' from back in '75. ed had spent sometime in nepal and showed a slide show of his trip to the pinkham crowd. billy had seen those pictures and decided he needed to see the beauty for himself. he ended spending 10 years in nepal and 5 more in bhutan--ed had changed his life. on a sadder note, the guy running this cold river opening, bill waste, was the brother of connie who had also been on our pinkham crew. connie died in october '75 of a heart complication while the crew had been playing touch football down at the auto road. ed had been playing that day and i had gotten the news when i came back to pinkham to wash my clothes (i used the hobart--once a week whether i needed it or not). it was a reunion packed with quite a few emotional memories as well as work.

true to form for me, i woke very early, probably because it was raining and i was puzzling how i could get kevin home without getting wet. i tried to get back to sleep but didn't have much luck. around 4:30 i got out of bed and started packing. turns out both kevin and billy were awake too. when i greeted them a bit too enthusiastically for the hour, kevin pegged the moment, "it's like christmas, only it's raining!" we packed and wheeled the bikes over to the lodge, turned on the lights and raided the kitchen for breakfast. billy came with us and ed showed up after my second bowl of cereal and cup of tea. it had been a celebration of friends and i wish i had a better camera...nancy, ed's friend, took a final shot as we prepared to head down the road. (in a sweet coincidence, nancy also took the picture of ed and i up in tuckerman ravine when MOC met them over our annual april vacation trip!)

somehow it stopped raining as we pedaled away from our friends and ed 'rang us out.' at before six in the am a porch bell can be pretty loud in a quiet place. bill waste told me later that indeed he had "heard it!" we made it back to kevin's mostly dry and very happy to have shared the weekend. as i drove back to canaan to meet another set of dear friends for lunch and another hike, i wondered if like joe kurmaskie noted, "god had his back turned."

volunteer trail crew...

patrolling with MOC... having passed my introductory trail maintenance instruction hike, craig sanborn gave us our first assignment, to cruise the skyland trail and clear the winter debris from south ridge of cardigan, over orange, brown, and church mtn.s, to the trailhead on the alexandria end. first craig helped me spot a vehicle on the far side and soon after we made it back to the summer parking lot on cardigan, students started to show.

we ended up with four students: olivia, ben, haily, and julia, plus skip and eben (the oldest pendleton boy and an early MOC alum). after an introduction to the tools craig was loaning us--folks, meet loppers, bow saw, and hand clippers--we took a traditional picture, loaded bags, and headed up the trail.

it was a lively bunch and i had a big smile listening to eben talking the "old days" when he was at mascoma, comparing that with what the others were telling him was going on now. it always amazes me that while things do change, they also stay the same.

some debris here and there, but basically things were clean. i started putting a stepping stone here and there in wet spots where i hypothesized things might dry out eventually, but not anytime soon. we crossed a couple extended in-trail pools that skip declared ripe for a "bog bridge"! constructing a good bog bridge is a lot of work, but when done right, where needed, just what the doctor ordered. the twist for this trail is that it is not hiked all that much and hours spent here don't 'pay back' as well as on other trails. i put it on my mental inventory to run by craig.

passing over the bald lookouts on orange mtn we decided to stop for lunch and take in the view. things being totally socked-in, i gave a lichen lecture with the two samples i found back on the trail and stuck in my pocket. as mentioned in an earlier post, Usnea and Evernia are similar Genera of foliose lichen, both growing in the tops of dead or dying firs.

a break on the trail...having lopped a bit of brush here and there, cut and moved only three or four blowdowns, hiking went pretty quickly. after orange mtn the trail is even less traveled. it winds along a ridge of sorts, over grafton's knob, crane mtn, brown mtn, and finally church mtn before dropping down to the trail head on a steep back road, church hill road, just north of alexandria four corners. it is a good path and in the early spring, very open, even in a thick fog. as you near the eastern end--in alexandria--there are some interesting features.



first, one sees a fair bit of old logging scars, mainly ruts and stumps, off to the sides of the trail. at some point in the past, a lot of trees were removed from this area

second, on a fairly flat area near the end, we came across a long abandoned log cabin with a collapsed roof about twenty meters off to the side of the trail. the group did a bit of exploring and i snapped a photo.

wet and happy...

about two inches of rain over the last two weeks. rode into hanover saturday, last day of april--also last full, bright sunny day-until today. my memory is probably 'clouded', but it does seem like there has been more cool and precip than warm and sun lately--like the april showers that were supposed to bring may flowers were a month late. wednesday i rode to canaan elementary in the barest of drizzles. but, coming home was downright wet. hiking with alan thursday he announced, totally serious, "if it starts to rain any harder, i'm bailing." with MOC saturday somebody who wasn't going out with us, commented, "looks like you'll be in the clouds and drizzle all day." with pam sunday morning i reminded her of last week, "hey, it's raining, let's go hiking." i could go on but you might think i was whining!

that ride into hanover was the swan song for long-er rides taken on my dear old pearl izumi saddle. last fall, about ohio, i started noticing toward the end of somedays my penis would be numb. i could still pee but it felt really weird. long story short, i got a new saddle with a cut out to relieve pressure on the perineum... sawyer had suggested this particular model, a brooks cambium 17, and i went for it. now it is on and i am happy so far, but don't have the long miles on it yet to tell if it will actually do the trick. one side benefit right out of the box was it is weather proof! brooks is legendary for its leather bike saddles which don't always appreciate getting wet. the cambium is rubber, cotton, "enhanced by a thin layer of structural textile"! in the week i have had it on it has been rained on three times.

one of those rainy rides was last wednesday. as i mentioned earlier, it was only drizzling on my way to the regular 3rd grade gig. an hour later going away, it was raining fairly hard and i actually turned into our road rather than go the extra mile and a half down to the high school for my it job. i parked the bike and grabbed the truck. i got into work, my jacket and tights pretty much soaked and wondered why i didn't go in the house and change?

the next day, i pedaled off wearing a rain coat. i was heading over to the lower shaker wildlife management area to hike a newer trail with al. he met me with his declaration of leaving if it started raining. i added, "you mean harder?" i threw in the standard dig about you won't melt. he just smiled and mentioned something about being old and a fair-weather hiker. i doubted we would stay dry on this jaunt as it was more than five miles and we always stopped to look at moss, lichen, and such. i kept my rain jacket on...

about a mile up the trail i lost the rain jacket and despite the constant drops of fairly cool rain on the bare arms, it was much more comfortable. looking at the map above, from the parking, follow a solid line heading west, away from the lake, until you get to the dotted line, about a mile up hill. the dotted line runs somewhat north-ish for a couple of miles until it hits another solid white line. we stayed to the right when it forked again and ended back at the top of the upper field and finally t-ed into the main trail headed down and back to the parking area. it is mixed hiking and both alan and i thought it would be a good 'long' loop for the shaker snowshoe fest!

http://www.vernalpool.org/images/105-2YS-egg.jpg

 along our merry way, we veered off-
 trail a bunch. a couple of those times  we went after vernal pools, checking  for salamander eggs. there were  blueish-grey blobs in both looked at, which  made alan quite happy.

where the west side dotted line is bisected by the solid white trail, alan took me off the trail again and showed me a beech with a bear's claws had scarred the bark going up and down it. you can tell the down ones by the lengthy skid marks.
(i will get a better picture soon.)









we were toward the far side of trail, when we came upon a fir that stood out from its neighbors. it actually looked like it had pom-poms at the end of large sticks attached to the trunk instead of uniformly needled branches. pam and i had run across a tree just like this up behind our house on town hill. smaller needled branches littered the ground below both that tree and this one. i picked up a couple and was able to see they had been snipped off--probably with teeth...porcupine(s)! being a fairly heavy animal, they are limited as to how far out onto a branch they can feed. the needle bunches left at the ends of branches clearly showed that. it looked pretty bizarre.

double 'stump' in middle--
one fallen top in foreground...

one last foray off-trail ledus by what i took to be the tree that fell in the woods (a month or so back--scroll down in the "april fools" post) and definitely made a sound as i was there to hear it. about a 100 yards down the hill from where i originally heard it, we found two large downed tops. a double trunk, broken off about thirty feet up, stood a fair ways off, but that made sense as it was really windy that day they fell. the picture i got is not that great, but it shows one of the tops and you can see the trunks in the background.

we got back to al's truck and my bike about four hours after we started. and even though it rained or drizzled most of the way, alan never "bailed". as i rolled down to 4-A, i was already planning to bring pam out on the weekend.

turns out it was raining saturday and sunday. saturday the MOC trail crew, with skip and eben, did our first patrol. we hiked up the south ridge on cardigan and turned south on the skyland trail. i am planning to write something on that day alone--a grand day out deserves its own post!

not that these other days are less grand, in fact sunday was even wetter--how great is that! being mothers' day and having been invited down to sadie's and otavio's for a mid-day dinner, we left the house early and made it onto the trail about 9:30. that may not sound all that early for some, but considering that pam is often just getting out of bed at that time, at least on the weekends, it was for us. and yes, it was raining. nothing a raincoat couldn't handle, but fairly steady. i took her the short, direct way up to find the 'bear claw tree'. (most of these trails have names but i can't remember them.) we snapped a few pictures of that and one of a pileated woodpecker project. the huge pile of chips below the ten foot stump made me laugh, that bird was busy! turned out we watched the movie 'concussion' that night and dr. omalu--brilliantly acted by will smith--mentioned how woodpeckers' tongues wrapped around their brain and acted as shock absorbers. the shock absorption is still up for debate, but they do have air pockets about the brain which help them limit the impact. it was an interesting connection...

and speaking of interesting, we followed the same loop heading north alan and i had, looking for a really ancient sugar house complete with pieces of the evaporator. al and i had taken it out of the duff and set it up on the stone foundation where the trail passed. it looked really cool and you can still read the company name. i tried researching it on the web but didn't find much beyond the mention of the pat. given to the "hartford sorgum machine co." manufacturers of "cory's sugar evaporator"

the rain seemed to be coming down harder and we figured it was about time to turn back, get home, and clean up some. pam was also pretty excited to show me her little "moss mouse house" she had spotted a ways back. it was indeed cute, but looking at the picture we realized, things are just better when you see them 'live'!

"just better...live" does have its limits though. sadie and otavio, sawyer and hannah, gave pam a wonderful mother's day but when we tried to go outdoors to have our cake and eat it too, it started raining. oh well, the company was excellent--it was live after all, inside or out.