What's Your Nature?
Become a Nature Up North explorer to share your encounters with wild things and wild places in New York's North Country. Post your wildlife sightings, landscape shots, photos from your outings, and even your organization's events!
Raquette River Otters
This spot, where Tupper Lake narrows into the Raquette River, is ideal for river otters. The river here never freezes completely, allowing otters plenty of openings to slip into the icy water and catch fish. Several times during the day I saw them on the ice, only to run outside with my camera and discover that they'd disappeared into the water again. Finally three of them stuck around for a while. I watched them hunt for about ten minutes before they moved down river. Awesome creatures.
ice storm 2013
Wanted to capture the beauty of nature from the ice storm 2013!
Harper Falls Winter
8-10 inches of fluffy powder transformed the landscape last weekend, creating true winter hiking conditions. Along the way to Harper Falls we encountered a porcupine in a small beech tree. It had stripped nearly all of the bark off the upper third of the tree. I'm always impressed by the resiliency of winter wildlife. The tree, on the other hand, will not be long for this world.
Let's Talk Turkey!
In honor of Thanksgiving, I’m going to pause and give thanks for a North Country native, the wild turkey. Likely you’ve seen these large birds traveling in flocks along the side of the road. But did you know that they were once rare in these parts? And across the country? The abundance of wild turkeys across North America is a real conservation success story. And, oddly enough, the story of the domesticated turkey that many of us will feast on this weekend is related.
Azure for Sunrise
A few weeks back a friend and I ventured out to Azure and climbed the trail by headlamp. We summited and climbed up the fire tower just in time for a view of the rising sun!
A War on Crows
At this time of year crows flock to US cities by the thousands to roost in urban trees. The North Country is no exception, as illustrated in recent news stories about Watertown’s efforts to scare off more than 30,000 crows from city landmarks. In previous years, Watertown has hired private contractors to chase crows from their roosts using
Sunrise Fun Facts
We are happy to share this guest blog from Aileen O'Donoghue, an astronomist from the Physics Department at St. Lawrence University!
To Keep the Towers?
If you’ve climbed nearby mounts Arab or Azure, you can attest to the view-enhancing benefits of a summit fire tower. The climb to a fire tower’s observation deck affords a commanding 360 degree view of the surrounding landscape. Adirondack fire towers are relics of Park history.
