Our last snowfall, I think...and hope...

 SNOW TOTAL FOR THE 2025-2026 SEASON = 80.25"

The overnight snowfall totaled 0.25". The overnight temp. was 23F. I am thinking that this is the last snowfall of the year since the weather is warming into the 50's after today.

The Mud Season Blues

Drew has created a fun song and photos through AI. He used Gemini and Lyra3Pro, along with iMovie to create this video. The vocal artist is also AI, not a real person. Enjoy!

Ice Out Has Occurred on Caesar Pond

South side of the pond is now ice free!

I call Ice Out when the south cove is navigable by boat, and with the wind blowing at around 16mph today, the ice has melted and been pushed back far enough that we can now go boating over the entire pond. AWESOME!!!

View looking north along Caesar Pond. The wind practically took my breath away! The feel-like temperature was around 37F and it really felt cold over at the pond, which acts like a wind tunnel.

2026 Maine Big Night # 2

  Maine Big Night # 2. We had rain all day long that stopped at around 5pm.

LH1Bowd (This year's participants are me, Paul, and Caroline. Kathy will join us periodically.) Lauren Leclerc is the official adopter of the site.

April 5, 2026.  Start time 7:10pm.-8:10pm AND 10pm-11pm

Certified Volunteers - 1 (Paul) (10pm-11pm)

Uncertified Volunteers - 1 (Kathy) (7:10pm-8:10pm)

Starting Temp: 43F.   Ending Temp.:  42F

Precipitation: Misty

The road is wet.

Traffic Tally:  5 vehicles

Species Live:  12 Spring Peepers, 1 Wood Frog, 3 Spotted Salamanders, 1 Pickerel Frog, 2 Newts, 1 two lined salamander

Species Dead:  4 Spring Peepers

Species Injured: 0

NOTES: Kathy only saw one live spring peeper during her hour. Paul found the rest of the amphibians. He also met the woman who adopted our site and she does wetland surveys for a company. She had made the site private as she thought that her kids wanted to be involved, but they are not interested.

The dock is in the water!

We popped on over to Caesar Pond and found that the area in front of our put-in was ice free, so we called our neighbor to come on over and help put his dock into the water. Yay! Let the boating season begin!

Then, I took a panorama of the pond. I should be able to call "Ice Out" as soon as the south cove is open in a few days.

Snow, Snow, and more Snow! And a walk down Starbird Corner Rd.

I think that I am officially tired of snow! (Shhh...did I just say that???) We have had quite a bit of snow lately, followed by thawing, followed by more snow. We cannot go into the forest at this time as there are a lot of icy patches under the snow that we cannot detect.  At present, we have had 80 inches of gorgeous, frozen, white stuff for this winter season. I think we have a bit more to go.

Even though it was a bit of an icy start to the day, we got out for a walk on Starbird Corner. The temperature rose to 32.8F for the high, and it was cloudy and spitting snow on and off all day. Beech trees have lots of buds ready to burst when springtime gets into full swing.

The scene was so pretty today as this last storm gave us some very wet and heavy snow.

Tree limbs were over burdened and were touching the ground in many places.

I rather like this same view but in portrait mode.

Lastly, fresh snow brings fresh animal tracks. I think these are from a squirrel who was crossing the road this morning.

2026 Maine Big Night # 1

 Maine Big Night # 1. The daytime temperature rose to 50F and we had rain that started Monday morning and rained all day long. We had a break in the rain and Paul went out to check on amphibian movement.

LH1Bowd (This year's participants are me, Paul, and Caroline. Kathy will join us periodically.) Actually, as of the writing of this entry, we aren't sure who has adopted the Lewis Hill Rd. site and we are trying to find out. We may not be allowed to survey there as whoever adopted it did so as a closed site with no additional participants. Curious...

May 16, 2026.  Start time 7:20pm.  End time 8:20pm

Certified Volunteers - 1 (Paul)

Uncertified Volunteers - 0

Starting Temp: 50F.   Ending Temp.:  49.5F

Precipitation: Very light drizzle

The road is wet.

Traffic Tally:  6 vehicles

Species Live:  2 Spring Peepers

Species Dead:  0

Species Injured: 0

NOTES: Paul saw eyes glowing on the downstream side of the road. The animal crossed in front of Paul and slipped into the pond. It was too small to be an otter and Paul surmised that it must have been a mink.

Owl prints in the snow

I went out for a snow shoe in the woods behind our house and found three different areas where an owl had been desperately hunting for prey. Even though owls can hear rodents under the snow, when the snowpack deepens it is more difficult for owls to secure their meal. I made this video to show to the local kindergarten students (who I volunteer with) and anyone else who ventures out into a winter wonderland. (By the way, the first owl print with complete wing prints and body print was one that we found out on Caesar Pond after a heavy snowfall quite a few years ago.)

The kindergarten students are currently studying owls. They have been reading and analyzing several works of fiction. Next, they will transition to nonfiction, and that is where this video will come in. We will analyze and learn about owl prints which will really excite the kids to go out to their forest classroom, and even into the woods at home, to investigate.

Aurora Borealis is crazy awesome tonight

Tonight the aurora borealis is super active all over Maine. For me, it was not visible to the naked eye, but I could see it on the cell phone camera. It started out green (the most common color) from excited oxygen atoms from 60-150 miles in altitude.

I went outside from 6pm-7pm to photograph it from the front yard again. Had I been over at Caesar Pond, it would have been magnificent. I attached my cell phone to a tripod to get clear photos.

We had such a great light show with curtains of light shifting to and fro.

The sky was so clear and cold at 10F. My fingers nearly froze! I have the best neighbors who all turned their outside lights off so that I could have as dark a setting as possible.

I had a difficult time choosing which photos I liked best. Even though they are similar, you can see the shift of color over time. 

I took 3 second exposures often seconds apart.

I couldn't be more pleased with the iPhone 16 pro camera. It did a magnificent job with night sky photos.

Carrying a cell phone is so much easier than hauling around my DSLR cameras, especially for nighttime photography in winter.

Aurora Borealis

There was promise of the strongest aurora since the 2003 "knock your socks off experience". However, it did not materialize for us in our location of Maine. 

But, I did get to practice some nighttime photography with my iPhone 16 pro. And, I was totally pleased that my photos were in focus! Note: I did not get over to the south end of the pond to photograph the aurora looking north as I couldn't safely walk down the snowy side of the street in the dark. Nor could I break trail and tromp through the snow to the pond in the dark while carrying the tripod. So, I tromped a short trail to the middle of our front yard. Not optimal, but at least I got a few photos.

Geesh! It was windy out. I was thinking that I would need to sandbag my tripod legs, but they were stuck so far into the snow that I had good stabilization. We started out with a bit of cloud cover and a slight tint of red in the night sky. See the Pleiades star cluster at the top of the photo!

I was able to capture a bit of aurora activity looking northwest. I didn't last too long outside as it was so cold! My fingers were freezing and my knees were knocking!

Phone settings: I activated "Night Mode" by tapping on the moon icon. I tried to set the exposure time to 10 seconds, but it set itself to 3 seconds. That's okay... I tapped on the screen to set the focus lock. Then, I tried to set the timer for 3 seconds to avoid camera shake when touching the shutter button.