Category: Nature

Wildlife XVI: The Dead Of Night

  • April 25, 2020

Maybe you’ve heard the stories of nature encroaching as man stays home? I was wondering if that was happening even in our own backyard, and dragged out the (old, borderline obsolete) wildlife camera for another bout of surveilling. Here’s what I found…

The usual suspects were of course represented. As you know by know squirrels are so abundant I sometimes wonder if they own this house and we just rent. The deer (with baby) photo I had to adjust since it was near pitch black. The nights have been dark recently and the animals have skulked with abandon.

KLS and I were just debating the difference between doves and pigeons but we’re 99% sure this dude is a dove since we’ve recently had one lurking. When they sing – or rather make their dove noises – it really carries and it can be difficult to tell where they are. Yesterday there was one on our roof (I think?) and his cooing filled the house.

We’ve had rabbits living in our backyard for years and they’re a common sight during the day nibbling at the edge of our lawn. Sometimes they’ll come up onto the patio in the middle of the day and make good viewing for the kitties. Apparently they hop around at night as well.

So with the expected visitors out of the way, time for some not-so-common ones:

A racoon! There were several shots of this guy over a few nights. Aside from some rock-hard break (see below) we hadn’t put food out so he was probably just exploring. In a few photos it looked like he was even grooming. I guess he’s comfortable on our patio.

There were only a couple of shots of this possum, and they were separated by over a week. He’s decently sized (about as big as a small cat). I wonder where he lives?

This one is a mystery. See that black thing at the edge of the yard? We’re not sure what it is! The likely culprit is a fat dog with a tiny tail looking away from us, but in all the aeons we have lived here we have never seen a dog running wild (which is not allowed in NY State). Therefore I’m inclined to think it’s either a giant unidentified black cat like the Beast of Exmoor. What do you think?

This last pic is even more mysterious! See that half-blurred thing flying by? Is it a bumblebee? A wasp? A hummingbird? A goldfinch? The camera doesn’t have a super-fast shutter speed so whatever it was is flying somewhat slowly, but the size seems to preclude an insect since it isn’t that close to the lens. A genuine mystery. What do you think?

Incidentally you can see one of our doorstop-breadrolls in the above pic, just at the edge of the patio on the right. I was hoping for some evidence of who took them but there was none. Between two empty daytime photos separated by 23 minutes the roll had just disappeared. The rolls were (we think) too big and heavy for a squirrel, so whatever took them was too fast for the camera! Another mystery unsolved…

  • Posted in Animals
  • Robert

Snowpocalypse 2019

  • December 3, 2019

In the last 48 hours we received a lot of snow. I took regular photos from the same angle to show the accumulation. Here they are:

The above three run from noon to about 5 pm on Sunday. The snow was falling lightly at first, but picked up after nightfall.

The above is a 10 pm shot. It looks brighter than the 5 pm one due to the remarkable low light camera mode of my new iPhone. You can clearly see the snow has been coming down since the last shot: the driveway is barely visible here.

Above shows 6 am Monday morning. According to the weather service we’d received about 16 inches (~38 cm) overnight, and it was heavy snow which proved difficult to remove. Down near the street it was as deep as our snowthrower can handle, and although we have a powerful machine it really struggled.

That’s immediately after we finished clearing the snow. It was still falling lightly at this point. Although it was Monday almost everything was cancelled and we were both staying home for the day.

By around lunchtime not much had changed. The footprints were from the postman, who isn’t stopped by ‘a bit’ of snow!

By evening though (this is around 8 pm Monday) you can see it had built up somewhat again: there had probably been another 3-4 inches by this point.

And then we woke today to this: another 6+ inches since yesterday. Once again it was tricky to remove due to heaviness and the cold (it was -4 C) but at least it had stopped falling.

And here’s the final shot, after we had finished this morning. All told the official tally is 22.6 inches of snow (57.4 cm) in Albany and slightly more where we live just to the south. It was the 8th biggest snowfall of all time in this city. I expect well remember it for a while 🙂

Newcastle 2

  • January 4, 2019

Went to the Newcastle fireworks with Sue and her family, but nature had other ideas and put on a spectacular show of her own:

It’s the only rain I’ve seen so far, and only lasted a couple of hours. I was home and slept through midnight as usual. Happy New Year!

I’ve been catching up with friends a lot: a swim in the ocean baths with K, lunch with M and a scenic drive with S:

And there’s been a bit of this:

And this:

And of course this:

Hrm… what am I painting with my Crayola watercolors?

Lazy days in Newcastle then, albeit with a lot of walking in hot, hot sun. I don’t want to push myself too hard with Tokyo on the horizon 🙂