We’ve kayaked a few times this week on the Connecticut, the Pompy, and North Hartland Lake. We saw a variety of critters: a porcupine,
a beaver or two,
geese,
a cormorant,
red-winged blackbirds,
sandpipers,
turtles, a few ducks, no herons,
and Jemma, the swimming dog.
We spent the morning on Grafton Pond. We saw our usual complement of loons and geese.
Both species are thinking about nesting, as well as a hairy woodpecker.
Grafton Pond, NH 5/29/18
We also saw some turtles.
We put the kayaks in the Connecticut River for the first time this year. We were surprised to see more sandpipers than ducks.
We also saw a variety of song birds,
Connecticut River, 5/27/2018
Connecticut River, 5/27/2018
and other critters.
Many spots on the rivers were noisy with frogs croaking
and I finally spotted one.
For a change, we walked on Hurricane Hill on Friday and saw wild flowers and a chipmunk.
Hartford, VT 5/25/18
We went to the Vermont Institute for Natural Science, a raptor rehab center, on Mother’s day. All of the birds seen here have something wrong with them that prevent them from thriving in the wild: a broken wing that didn’t heal correctly, a broken beak, habituated to humans…
