There was rain in the forecast for most of the morning on Tuesday, and I was looking forward to a hike in the woods as it fell. Sadly, Ma Nature didn’t get the memo, and the rain didn’t start until a couple of hours after I finished. To quote my late father, “Well, I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch.”
Well, just because it didn’t rain, doesn’t mean I wasn’t soaked… with sweat! Eesh!! Seems just like last week, I was still hiking with gloves on, and now I finish soaked and smelling like a rotting onion, lost in the dark nether regions of its corner kitchen cabinet home (not that something like that has ever happened in our house).
The rain wasn’t the only thing I missed out on! Due to the darkness of the early morning woods, I also missed out on a few bird shots, as well as some sort of bird gang fight. I’ll explain.
Just after Mile 2, I saw what looked to be a hawk fly from one tree to another one further down the trail. Then I saw what looked to be another one deeper in the woods. At the same time, there were crows crowing and blue jays screeching. Seconds later, the hawk down the trail did a U-turn, flew back into the woods, and appeared to fly directly at either a squirrel or one of the crows in the treetops, and then I heard the telltale sound of a critter hitting the ground!
The sound was nearly identical to the one I heard a few weeks ago when I saw two squirrels fighting/playing about 20 feet up a tree. One squirrel would knock the other one off, it would fall to the forest floor with a thud, and then scramble back up the tree to do it all over again. I have no idea what sort of critter fell to the ground, but something did, and it was bird chaos for a few minutes as I stood looking up into the dark branches, whilst sweating all over myself.
Soon after, I was crossing the Covered Bridge and peeping out the window opening in search of critters. Then, I looked down at a shadow and realized it was Wood Turtle turtle-ing across the bridge! It allowed me to take a few photos, and then I was out the other side and greeted by another turtle sitting in the grass. That’s three turtle sightings in two lumbers, one of them being a snapping turtle laying her eggs!
The rest of the hike was good, but I wasn’t seeing much to photograph. Err, I mean, I wasn’t seeing much that I COULD photograph due to the darkness of the woods. Regardless of a lack of critter pics, it was a good lumber, and I fished with 6.25 miles, a couple of turtle pics, and some nature nubbins.
June is off to a great start in the lumbering department, and I hope to be back in the steamy woods tomorrow morning, hopefully with some better light.
Later.