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!
A rare ( for me ) drone encounter
I was out on a little floating dock on a quiet pond and saw this snake basking in the sun.
There was about 25 feet of water between us, so I got a photo or two in case it left.
Then as I had my drone nearby, I decided to put that up and see if I could get an overhead shot.
I don't like flying it if there are other animals that will likely not react well around one, but I didn't think a snake would be too disturbed by it.
So for me, it's a pretty rare image of an animal from the drone.
What's taking the Fairies so long?
Hello North Country Explorers!
The North Country's Unnoticed Green Machine
When most people think of powerful carbon sinks, they may think of the vast Pacific Ocean or the dense Amazon Rainforest, which is all true, but we often miss the true unsung hero of carbon sequestration - the quiet, soggy peatlands. You may be surprised to learn that these carbon storages are right here in the North Country. Peatlands, also known as bogs or mires, are ecological powerhouses that silently capture and lock down tons of carbon over thousands of years under mosses and half-dead logs.
Caught in the web
Each morning there is a new web from this marbled orbweaver on our porch, today I noticed a bee that had become trapped.
I wanted to get a picture of the spider, and when I came back the spider had begun to pull the bee towards it and proceeded to eat it.
I'm not sure if this was the stage when it's injecting the digestive enzymes, or if that was done earlier and it's now "drinking" the liquified meat.
But in either case, it was amazing to be able to see it so clearly.
Our Better Nature: Plants with a PR Problem
Names are important, as we often form opinions based on what we associate with them. Even if you’ve never watched an episode of the ’60s sit-com Gilligan’s Island, you could probably guess that the character Mary Ann Summers was not a millionaire on the show, and that Thurston Howell III wasn’t the down-home farmer from Kansas. Fiction writers like to play on common beliefs to convey good or bad through their characters’ names.