Day 7.076: I ran a what?

All of these things have something in common:

They don't look very much like the route map I posted yesterday.

All but one of them were suggested (not the specific pictures - just the things) by either commenters on this blog, my Facebook friends or my running forum buddies.

If we count "licensed to carry small arms" as a T-rex vote, then that wins with three votes. Two votes went to each of aardvark, dog and kangaroo. There was a strong thread of puppets with Kermit, Sam the Eagle, Cookie Monster and Big Bird all featuring. Sherlock Holmes and The Stig round out the guesses - leaving just...drum roll...the mouse.

Yes I thought it looked like a mouse, but what do I know. I may have been influenced by the fact that one got into my desk drawer at work and tucked into a snack I'd left there over the weekend.

All of this nonsense did lead me to these people though - hat tip to ilanarama for that one!

Day 7.050: Moose and a moose

With another offer to buy a house circulating, we took E5N1 and his friend "Moose" to Freeport - home of LL Bean - where we found:

1. A nice lunch
2. A huge LL Bean store
3. One of Moose's distant relatives

We nearly lost Moose himself a few minutes before this was taken and spent an anxious few minutes retracing our steps. In the midst of all this retail therapy, the only purchase made was by E5N1 who bought some marbles and later said this (verbatim apart from what he calls his sister):

I'm not going to lose these.

Exile #3 lost her marbles.

Day 7.026: That stinks!

One of the things I've been afraid of since I started running in the pre-dawn darkness is surprising a skunk. Skunks are reasonably common, but rarely seen - except as roadkill and then usually only identifiable by the smell.  I saw one once, round the corner from our NY home, but only from the safety of a car.

This morning, I glanced to see what was rustling on the other side of a chain-link fence and saw - just a couple of feet away - the dreaded creature.

I backed up, got my phone out and snapped some pictures (the best I could get with my iPhone in the dark), while walking down to the end of the fence to get a clearer shot.

In that last picture, he was clearly heading straight for me, so I moved to alert him to my presence - I did not want to surprise him at close quarters - and he wandered off in the other direction with his tail reassuringly lowered.

So that was quite cool.

It had just started to snow and within a few moments it was a full-on snowstorm and the wind was whipping the "flakes" (more like mini-icy-shuriken) into my face. Sadly I had to cut my run short to a mere 6.5 miles instead of 10. Yeah that pretty much stinks.

Day 7.016: Deja viewed

Having complained about my running taking me to places with no camera, I found myself with a couple of free hours this afternoon and decided to brave the bitterly cold wind to take my camera back where I'd been yesterday morning.

I got a nice picture of the light and the dual-carriageway trails:

But the big surprise was to see the same huge bird I'd attempted to photograph with my phone yesterday.  In the same place - diving and reappearing near the shore.  I got some better pictures:

and with the help of my parents on a Facetime call earlier, identified it as a common loon - its winter plumage threw us off briefly - but it is quite unmistakable once you've seen it.

And as a bonus, I captured a nicer picture of a previously-punned common eider.

Day 7.015: Snowbug

My run this morning took me back to the Bug Light where I ran on my first weekend long-run in Maine back in November. It looked rather different today:

Also pictured:  bottom left - the view to my normal weekday running area; bottom right - in South Portland they must clear the snow with something that leaves this median (central-reservation) arrangement on the trails.

Finally, in the top right - I photographed this bird (best I could do with my phone) because it looked so huge.  I thought it might be a great cormorant, but it seems too white in the front and the white-breasted variety looks to be more of an African subspecies.  If only I could run with my real camera!

Day 6.365: New year's eve

Today is the last day of the year numbered "6" of the Exile, which means that seven years ago today we were flying with our one-way tickets to start a new life in New York.  I didn't write a post on Day 0, but I did look back at it a year later on Day 365.

Today was also a day of travelling west to New York for me. I'm home for a flying visit (not literally - I drove here!) from Maine.

And since none of that really results in anything photographic, here are some pictures of the wildlife at the feeders from our visit to Five Rivers just before most of the rest of the world celebrated the new year.

Day 6.362: I see...

I ran again this morning - picking my way over sheets of ice in places - wishing I'd allowed for the wind in my clothing choices in others.

One thing I can report is that the cove is open water once more - all the ice gone except for around the shoreline.

Here are a few more pictures from Sunday, when the ducks were weaving in and out of the ice and the ice submerged by the tide would occasionally break free and float to the surface creating some dramatic turbulence.

This may explain yesterday's picture if you didn't get it!

These two were diving - rather them than me.

Splashdown!

Day 6.356: Dear deer

We spotted a young deer in the back yard a few days ago. It was hobbling badly holding one of its back legs off the ground. We saw it fall over, get back up and then just lie down under a small tree.

Not sure what to do, we called animal control - who were out due to the holidays. A few minutes later, two of the local police were on our doorstep.

They walked towards it, hoping to get close enough to put it out of its misery but it wasn't ready for that and made its way off across our neighbours' yards.  We saw them a minute or so later, one street over and half expected to hear a gunshot but never did.

It was with mixed feelings we saw the same deer back in our yard again - still limping - a couple of days later.  This time, we let it be.

Day 6.354: Five Rivers - plus 3 minus 1

With E5N1 at a birthday party for a couple of hours, the rest of us decided to show our visitors some upstate hospitality by taking them for a bitterly cold walk in nature.

We actually had a great time - brief (cold) hike at Five Rivers followed by a thaw-out in the visitor center.

Here are a few moments.

We waved them goodbye this evening - for their late-night drive back to the city. Sad to see them go, but so glad they came to visit!

Day 6.351: Schoharie Creek Preserve

We've visited most of the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy properties over the last few years, so we were interested to hear of a new one. Today we visited the Schoharie Creek Preserve where there is a recently opened 1.3 mile loop trail.

The kids suggested that we were the only people crazy enough to be out hiking on a day like today, but when we got back to the car, there was another one there and the turkeys had clearly been along the trail too!

The north and east sides of the preserve are bordered by two creeks that couldn't be more different.  Leaving by the back of the parking lot and looping clockwise, the first is Wilsey Creek, a small steep stream with a series of waterfalls - not hard to see, but rather too hidden by the trees for good photographs (the two on the right are from the road after we'd reclaimed the car):

The second is Schoharie Creek itself, which here is a wide open river and the trail descends right beside it.  Today it had impressive lumps of ice on the shoreline and impressive (and apparently slippery) ice on the trail (E5N1 is hamming it up - it's not as bad as it looks!)

The trails down to the creek and back are fairly steep, but were fairly easily passable even today. It's a beautiful spot and we were happy to have taken the drive out to Esperance to take a walk there.

Day 6.346: Bob & Fred

At lunchtime we had a discussion about things that we all wanted to fit in during the next week or so. Exile #4 said that she wanted to make a snowman since she'd missed out yesterday. With the temperature expected to get up to something like 60°F today, we thought we'd better make that a priority.

So, Exile #4, E5N1 and I spent the early afternoon doing this...

Bob with his dog Fred and Fred's kennel.

I suspect that Bob's face and Fred's raisin "dog-food" will go the same way as Bob's predecessor's similar face - eaten by wild animals in the night (it was deer yesterday) - but we were pretty happy with our work in the rapidly melting snow.

Day 6.331: A run in the snow

I wasn't expecting to write a sister post to my horror story from yesterday, but at least it was a good one today!

We'd been warned of snow. In the end there was a good coating - maybe an inch in a few places. I tied my Yaktrax to my high vis vest in case I needed them along the way and set out (I didn't use them in the end although I thought about it a couple of times).

The route I'd planned took me first to Mackworth Island, where we visited as a family back in early November. I took one of the same photos to capture the snowiness.

Just before I took that I'd added red fox to my mental list of "Animals that look amazing on a snowy day" having seen one cross the trail ahead of me.

Here's the view out to sea from the same spot.

Later, I ran up to the old city landfill and through the woods behind it:

As you can see it was quite a different experience from yesterday's - despite similarly muddy conditions.

Day 6.318: Popham Beach State Park

I'd decided for my first solo day in Maine yesterday to see something of the coast. On a Saturday in November, hiking a trail would mean making sure I couldn't be mistaken for a deer by bleary-eyed hunter, so I decided a beach was a safe option. I drove about an hour total - north then south again on the far side of Casco Bay - to an area of long peninsulas and islands known as Maine's mid-coast.

This is what I found:

Oh yeah!

I love that in photos you can't tell that it was crazy cold and windy - it really was that beautiful though.

I walked around for quite a while marvelling at the patterns in the sand made by wind and water - and then by the transitions between them.

There were islands just off shore:

One of them would have been accessible if I'd been willing to brave some cold sea water:

but did I mention that it was barely above freezing (if at all) and windy - so paddling was out of the question.

Until I actually did.

Yes I took off my shoes and socks and paddled over that stream.  I didn't actually stop to take photos while in the water though - I took those first while still shod. Shoeless time was definitely kept to a bare (see what I did there?) minimum.

Between that area and the low-tide-ish sea was an area of grasses which must be just above sea level at high tide.  There I saw a flock of today's mystery birds - they were doing circuits and I got a lot of quite decent photos but have still completely failed to identify them.

Anyone know what they are?

The only other live animals I photographed were of the domesticated variety:

Apparently only (mad) dogs and Englishmen go in the water in November in Maine.

I loved how the wind was exposing things in one place (sand dollar on a pedestal and the other top photo here) and burying things in other places (shell, lobster pot and dead crab).

As I was leaving, the tide was coming in - the largest waves washing over parched dry sand.

Apologies for the 23 photos.  If it's any comfort, I took a lot more than that!

Day 6.307: I'd, er, been wondering...

...what these birds are:

As I might have mentioned, I'm pretty sure I know what the top right one is (common enough!) The top left might be a sharp-shinned hawk. It was tussling with the squirrels in a Portland park.  Bottom left might be buffleheads (or maybe that's me). but the other one is a complete mystery at this point.

Day 6.290: A surprise sculpture walk

We were forced to be out of the house for a while for a couple of viewings today. We decided to have a walk around the Beaver Tree Trail at Five Rivers. It was cold, but as lovely as usual:

Familiar though we are with the trail, we were surprised to find a piece of nature-art part way around:

and then another:

Later we spotted a less natural, but equally unexpected (and frankly baffling) piece:

We also got quite excited about this construction:

- the beavers have built their best pond-level-raising dam ever.