Category Archives: Nature

Trescott Company Land in Winter

By jimblock | Published March 3, 2013
Porcipine Tree and Nest Hole

Porcipine Tree and Nest Hole

Organized by the Hanover Conservancy, a tour of the normally-closed Trescott Water Company Land in Hanover Saturday provided some forestry education and views of two porcupine dens. The photo at the right shows the characteristic porcupine scat pile and the entry hole for the den. The other tree, seen below, had the entry at ground level.

DQ079--Porcupine-Den-at tree base

If you would like to see photos of this area in fall, CLICK HERE. Below is a slide show of our winter trip yesterday.

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Tunis Brook Mill Lot with Hanover Conservancy

By jimblock | Published February 17, 2013

Hanover Conservancy hike along Tunis Road

Hanover Conservancy hike along Tunis Road


Moose Browsed Tree

Moose Browsed Tree

Alcott Smith led a group of about two dozen hardy souls on an adventure up Tunis Road, through beautiful forests and frozen wetlands, and back down to the Tunis Brook Mill Lot owned by the Hanover Conservancy which sponsored this hike yesterday.

Along the way we found tracks of deer, turkeys, coyote, fisher, deer mouse, shoeshoe hare, long-tailed weasel, red-backed vole, porcupine, red squirrel, and ruffed grouse. We saw many moose browsed trees as on the right and below.

DP976I

We saw some great trees: butternut, red maple, black ash, and a huge old yellow birch. Alcott took us to an active porcupine den, but porkie was too far inside to be seen. We found a modified snow roost where a ruffed grouse had spent the previous evening.

Ruffed Grouse night roost

Ruffed Grouse night roost

We saw cellar holes of long-departed homes. One tree sported two oyster mushrooms. And then there was an amazing balanced bolder.

DP984--Balancing-Bolder--Pan-(4)

Just before we reached the Tunis Mill site we saw an extraordinarily large glacial erratic. On one part of it was eatable rock tripe, a lichen, and a neat rock pattern.

DQ008B-Rock-Tripe-on-glacial-erratic

Here is a slide show of some of the photos I took during this great learning experience.

01 DP959-Forest-near-Tunis-Road---Pan-(3).jpg02 DP955F.jpg03 DP962B.jpg04 DP963C.jpg05 DP970F.jpg06 DP967C.jpg08 DP967J.jpg09 DP970I-Coyote-Track.jpg10 DP971--Coyote-Tracks.jpg11 DP999C--Turkey-Tracks.jpg12 DP999G--Turkey-Tracks.jpg13 DP974A.jpg15 DP977C.jpg16 DP971B.jpg17 DP971F.jpg19 DP981--Alcott-at-old-cellar-hole--Pan-(4).jpg20 DP987B.jpg21 DP993--Alcott-near-Porcupine-Den--Pan-(3).jpg22 DP994C.jpg23 DP997B.jpg24 DP996B-Oyster-Mushroom.jpg25 DP996G-Oyster-Mushroom.jpg27 DP988C.jpg28 DP988D.jpg29 DQ010-Tunis-Mill-site--Pan-(6).jpg

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Snow Fleas and Snow Shoes

By jimblock | Published January 6, 2013

DP138

Jann and I took a snowshoe hike outback this morning. Outback is actually almost 200 acres of woods and open fields owned by Dartmouth College. It has wonderful trails for skiing, snowshoeing, or hiking. No need to worry about our carbon footprint; we head out our garage door, put on snowshoes, and make two right turns.

I can’t do much of anything without taking some photos. Jann made a great subject, and leftover pieces of trees and plants were interesting in the snow. Then I noticed that someone had sprinkled some pepper at the base of a tree. I knew from experience what this actually was, but I didn’t expected it midwinter – it normally happens in the spring. They were snow fleas.

DP152C

Snow fleas are tiny, harmless insects (not really fleas) that sometimes appear on the snow on a warmish day. Perhaps today qualified with the temperature hovering in the upper 20s. Fortunately I almost always carry a camera that has a great macro lens. This is often the only camera I carry when skiing, snowshoeing, or biking. So I was able to get some close-up shots of the tiny snow fleas. This photo here shows five of them next to a small tube of lip balm. It was the only thing we could find that would give scaled to the fleas.

What camera was I carrying? It was my trusty LX7 which is the newest in my series of LX2, LX3, and LX5 cameras. You can see more photos taken with this camera HERE and HERE. But don’t miss the short slide show below.

DP152I,H--Snow-Fleas-with-Lip-Balm

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Geminid Meteor Shower

By jimblock | Published December 15, 2012

Brenda emailed to alert me to the Geminid Meteor Shower which was going to peak later in the night of December 13. So I made some photos in my yard before retiring, at 1:30 AM, and early the next morning. It was partly cloudy at 1:30 but clear the other times.

At 8:20 PM shooting straight up I got many streaks in a 30 second exposure. Surprisingly they were all roughly parallel as can be seen from this photo below. This was shot with a 24mm lens on a full-frame camera at f/2.8 and ISO 1600.

The image below was made just before 6 AM December 14. It is a blend of six 8 second exposures, each at 24mm, f/3.5, and ISO 3200. The photos I blended were chosen from a series of 8 second exposures taken 16 seconds apart since the camera did an automatic 8 second “dark” exposure for noise reduction. The camera triggered repeatedly automatically because I set it for continuous (burst) shooting and locked the electronic cable release.

In case you missed it, my photos of the Transit of Venus are HERE.

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