Coming Home to Nest

April 17, 2020

On an electric pole along the Ausable River, between the villages of Jay and Ausable Forks, I saw a pair of nesting ospreys on Wednesday. They’ve picked this particular site before, and the region experienced a half-day planned electricity outage last year as crews tore down the nest after the chicks were grown. Looked on the map and noticed a pond in a housing development, which may be stocked, flows into the river near this site.

Noonmark from Route 73, along Ausable River.

This video, which is amazing, is not the electric pole in question. These birds eat a LOT of fish. They can pull bigger fish than shown here out of the lakes in the Adirondacks.

video: Tatiana Sappheira

I’ve been trying to learn to differentiate Osprey, Pileated Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, and Northern Goshawk calls. Sounds doable when comparing recordings, but in the field it’s a bit more challenging.

video: Kees Vanger
video: mylensview

100% Secure

June 7, 2019

A few glitches with my website last week, but everything’s fixed. I moved from one SSL provider (the thing that puts the “s” in https://) to another, and I expected some issues to arise, but they were thornier than predicted. The site was never compromised (and I’m not selling anything through this site anyway), but web browsers, especially Google, like to flag things.

Bugs have started coming out, so I don’t know how much longer I’ll be taking pictures. These are from three separate hikes this past week.

Mossy Cascade
Giant from Snow Mountain
Deer Brook
Hammond Pond