Outdoor Adventures with Gary Lee - Vol. 302
Two people called me last night, my daughter Erin and sister Wendy to tell me that Inlet was under a tornado watch and in a big red area on the weather map. I looked and sure enough it was all red over Inlet on the internet map and it was thundering outside and raining like cats and dogs which put the dish TV off for about five minutes. There was no freight train coming that I could hear in the distance, so I guess it touched down somewhere close or just over the hill like it did this summer. I opened all my intermittent streams during the afternoon, and they were flowing very well. My new culvert was even taking some water through it downstream.
There was a pond under my bird feeders and the net lane was a small lake but they are all gone this morning so Seventh Lake must be higher this morning. I heard that Windfall Outlet was going over the Big Moose Road again. The water just can’t get away from the culvert because old beaver dams down below have it dammed up. The culvert isn’t plugged, the water just can’t get away into Dart’s Lake where the outlet of Big Moose also goes.
There were a lot of birds at my feeders all week, mostly American Goldfinch, over 100 a couple of days. There were a few Pine Siskins feeding with them and I did catch a Song Sparrow. I banded over one hundred fifty birds over three days and I only had the net up for about two hours each day. Along with the American Goldfinch I got Pine Siskins, four Downy Woodpeckers, one Hairy Woodpecker, two White Breasted Nuthatches, two Red Breasted Nuthatches, six Slate Colored Juncos and one White Throated Sparrow. There were Robins, Red-winged Blackbirds, and Common Grackles at the feeders a few times, but I didn’t catch any of them. I saw an Eastern Bluebird in Eagle Bay one day and I’ve had reports of Common Mergansers in the outlet of Big Moose and in the Moose River in Old Forge. I even had reports of Common Loons on Fifth Lake and on the Moose River in Old Forge, but I haven’t seen them. I did have a beautiful Red-tailed Hawk on the carcass on my dam. So, the birds are on the move, and you never know what you might see during migration, especially when storms are moving in so fast from the west.
I went down to my sister Wendy’s in Cliffton Park and banded some of her birds. While putting up the net I caught a Black Capped Chickadee so I handed the not yet hung net to Wendy so I could get my pick to help me get out the bird. When I returned, she had laid the net on the ground, oh my God what a mess as the net picked up all the litter from the yard. We got it hung up, picked the bird and all the litter. We caught and banded twenty birds from her yard, mostly Chickadees. There were Cardinals, Titmice and a Red-bellied Woodpecker around but we didn’t catch them as the wind was really blowing the net around. Her husband Bob showed me how his electric snow blower like a vacuum in your house works as we banded in the garage. We had a nice visit, and we had clam chowder soup and a lobster roll for lunch outside in the sunshine.
The folks to the south of us sure got hammered by tornados from Arkansas through six other states during the last few days killing forty-two people and putting power out. Many small towns were nearly wiped off the map. Just west of there brush fires are burning in Texas and Oklahoma, driven by high winds they have burned several homes.
Right here in New York State, there were some big brush fires on Long Island which burned several acres and caused much smoke pollution in that area.
Results of the Great Backyard Bird Count are 8,078 species, 154 more species than last, 387,652 check lists, 189-741 photos and videos, 655,549 Merlin reports double from last year and reports from 217 countries over the four-day period.
The New York State DEC bear harvest report is out of 1,685 taken during the 2024 season. It was 24% higher than the 2023 harvest and approximately 13% more than the five- and 10-year averages.
Hunters harvested an estimated 657 bears in the Northern Zone and an estimated 1,028 bears in the Southern Zone.
I hope you got to see the blood moon eclipse in the middle of the night. It is the Worm Moon, and I got up at 2AM and it was dark out. I said to myself darn the clouds covered it, but I looked up and the stars were shining so now I had to find the dark moon already in eclipse. I did but it was behind the trees to the west so there was no picture.
More new birds everyday now, but that’s another story. See ya.
Photo above: Blood Worm Moon by Ellie George
