Almanack Contributor Gary Lee

Gary lives with his wife, Karen, at Eight Acre Wood in Inlet where he was the Forest Ranger for 35 years, working in the Moose River Wild Forest Recreation Area and West Canada Lakes Wilderness Area. Now retired, Gary works summers for the Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation, observing, catching and banding loons. The author of a column Daybreak to Twilight in local papers from 1986 to 2019, he now writes his Outdoor Adventures a weekly blog. In 2008, Gary coauthored a book with John M.C. “Mike” Peterson, "Adirondack Birding- 60 Great Places to Find Birds."


Saturday, June 17, 2023

Wildflowers, renesting loons, and blackflies pushing canoes

Yellow lady's slippers.

The smoke has gone away (somewhat) with the recent rain and wind change. With 8 million acres-plus on fire, that makes lots of smoke. It was so bad when I was out on the Cedar River Flow that it hid a thunderstorm because you couldn’t see the real clouds. Suddenly there was thunder booming not far away. I made it back to the landing and just got the canoe strapped onto the truck when the skies opened up. There was hail and a big temperature change of about fifteen degrees.

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, June 10, 2023

NYS Outdoorsmen Hall of Fame: 12 new members, 3 special award members inducted

From left: Harry and Ann Peck, Gary Lee, Laurie and Alan Rankin.

We need some rain as most of the lakes I’ve been visiting while watching Loons (as well as my pond) are at August-levels. Several of my Loon pairs are on nests already and putting up with the blackflies along with me. I’ve had my bug jacket on many times, but it changes what you see through the binoculars. When the sun shines on the mesh, you can hardly see anything. On May 21 (the day after I got back from the Crown Point Banding Station) Karen and I went to the induction of twelve new members and three special award members into the NYS Outdoorsmen Hall of Fame at Theodore’s Restaurant in Canastota.

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, June 3, 2023

Witnessing Big Moose Inn fire, banding hummers at Stillwater

Loon on the water

This week there were two mornings with frost here at Eight Acre Wood; both mornings the thermometer read 28 [degrees.] The second morning there was ice on the car, but not on the bird bath. I washed off as many of the blooming flowers and three apple trees in bloom as the hose would reach, which may have saved them…time will tell. My yellow lady’s slippers looked pretty sad, but perked up after the bath of water. The Phoebes are sitting on eggs under the porch and the male was having a [hard] time keeping the female fed those cold mornings. He traveled way up the driveway, foraging for flying bugs and ants. They must have made it, as they are still sitting.

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, May 27, 2023

Final days banding birds at the Crown Point Banding Station, approx. 750 birds banded

Gordon Howard banding a bird with the watchful eyes of children

The Crown Point Banding Station closed its doors on Saturday, May 20, with a good crew taking down tents, canopies, [a] weather station, and nets in short order by 11 a.m. The rain that was predicted went around us and the strong winds also didn’t come while we were picking up. Tom Barber had the nets up (and a few birds already bagged) when I got up at 5:30 a.m. He had picked six June bugs from the nets while putting them up and I found just one in the nets I put up. As I came out of the tent he said, “The Gray Catbirds are biting this morning and that was the first bird, I picked out of the main net lane.” He said, “I got a new bird for the year, a Brown-Headed Cowbird out of the North net.”

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, May 20, 2023

Crown Point Banding Station: New birds, beautiful sunrises, and cuckoo flowers

Canada Warbler

Here I am again at the Ticonderoga Library, getting a break from the Crown Point Banding Station after catching some nice birds this morning [May 16.]  [We will be] looking out for some thunderstorms this afternoon, which should knock down some birds that have been flying right over us for a couple days. We caught some new birds (for this year) to band this morning, [including] Tree Swallow, Canada Warbler, and a Brown Thrasher just before I left (which is the bird on the cover of the bird list for the Crown Point Historic Site.)

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, May 13, 2023

A Favorite Pastime: Banding birds at the Crown Point Banding Station

White blooming hepatica.

[I’m] writing this from the Ticonderoga Library…a real nice library [that is] open Tuesday through Saturday. I’m at the Crown Point Banding Station for a couple weeks trying to catch migrating birds coming from the south to their homes in the north (and some right at and around the station itself.) We’ve had lots of visitors in the four days we have been open…both people and birds. We thought we might have missed the migrants with all the warm weather we had earlier in the year, but not so.

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, May 6, 2023

ADK Spring: Wildflowers, rain showers & migrating birds

Virginia bluebells

[Locally, the weather] has been April showers that bring May flowers, and it also lessened the fire danger by keeping the leaf litter wet. The outdoor burning ban is still on until May 14. If we get some more warm days, the trees should be pushing out their leaves and flowers. Several wildflowers have popped out from the leaf cover and showed us their beauty. Yellow coltsfoot lines the roadsides in many places and the flowers face the sun as it goes from east to west. It looks like a dandelion flower, but it has little leaves on the stem of the flowers. Wild oats is a single yellow hanging bell, [and] the trout lily is out everywhere with its yellow flower and speckled green and brown leaves.

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, April 29, 2023

Bird watching, an earthquake, and a trip to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Spring flowers

There was a bit of a cool down this week, with several mornings in the twenties after a week in the much higher temperatures. Mother Nature even threw in an inch of snow one morning. Then at the end of the week, it was up in the high seventies again. Then, the skies opened last night [April 23] with a downpouring of rain and that lasted most of today [April 24]. We had well over an inch and a half, just looking at my little creek that goes under the driveway. The culvert on the ski trail was partially plugged and the water was running down along the trail and into my pond until I cleaned out the culvert. The pond was getting enough water from the spring creek that runs into it…and it was up about a foot.

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, April 22, 2023

In Loving Memory: Brother Bob joins Dad at family’s deer camp

Family at Memorial rock.

DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos reminded me that this is Earth Week. With most of the snow gone from the roadsides and other traveled trails, it might be good to do a little litter picking to spruce up the area for visitors as they travel here. With record temperatures in the 80s in most parts of the state, the snow took it in the shorts almost everywhere. [The] ice in all the lakes is out, with Blue Mountain and Big Moose Lakes being the last to go out on Sunday [April 9]. Luckily, there was very little wind to move the shifting ice around where it would do damage to docks and boathouses around the lakes. Better catch what water you can now, as the snow runoff is about over and [then] it will take rainfall to fill the Fulton Chain. With the wacky weather, you never know if we are going to get a gully washer or sprinkles.

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, April 15, 2023

Spying crocuses, banding birds & enjoying Spring weather

Crocus

Our weather has been rather pleasant with nice days up into the forties and fifties, and then cooling down [at] night into the teens. The folks to the north of us got a bad ice storm, knocking out power in many parts of Canada. We had some thunderstorms roll through here on Wednesday [April 5] with some hail, but nothing like the quarter-size hail they got up in Martinsburg by Lowville. I had taken my truck down to Utica for repairs, and they gave me a brand-new [Toyota] RAV4 to take home that day.

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, April 8, 2023

A fun family visit, bird watching, and more maple syrup

Karen and Granddaughter Milly.

March came in like a lamb and went out like a lamb in this neck of the woods. We got a few drabs of snow that last week…some that just covered the ground following rain each time. Some of the nights the stars were very bright, and one night the aurora borealis was super after the clouds moved out. I didn’t see it, but I saw several photos of the many colors that appeared in the night sky. Some days it got up into the high fifties, but some nights it got down into the single digits.

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, April 1, 2023

“Winter” Recap: Banding more than 300 Evening Grosbeaks

Fisher

We are having the tail end of the winter that didn’t happen here anyway. The folks out in the mountains of California and Nevada are looking at over 16 feet of snow in many places, with more coming this week with another atmospheric river coming ashore. Their reservoirs should be more than full when all this melts. Down south in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia fifteen tornadoes ripped through parts of these states, killing 26 and leaving hundreds homeless.

Rescuers continue to search for loved ones of residents of a Mississippi town destroyed by a tornado that was on the ground for over ninety miles. In Rolling Fork, a delta town of 2,000, hardly anyone escaped the storm without losing someone they knew or loved. More storms are going through that same area later this week, with more tornadoes and heavy rain forecast all the way to the east coast.

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, March 25, 2023

Sweet Maple Syrup, A Fishing Otter, & An Unexpected Visitor

Eric Sutherland's Maple Moss Sugarworks Sugar House.

The first day of Spring has arrived with only a new inch of snow and 18 degrees on the thermometer…(better than the three inches of snow and strong winds the day before, but no loss of power.) Many others are still struggling with more water and snow than they can deal with. Others [are dealing with] with damage from high winds and tornadoes that came across the country during the last week. Many in the south had a hard freeze which will affect many flowering trees, shrubs, and some crops that were already up.

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, March 18, 2023

Peeking at backyard wildlife: A flying squirrel and barred owl

Barred owl in the yard

The couple inches of snow on Friday night [March 10] got us through the weekend for Snofest. It looks like we might need a snowmobile to get around this week, if all the snow predictions come true. Looking at the weather map, they are getting much more to the south of us just like most of the storms this year…some went south of us, and some went north of us. I did see some skiers enjoying the new snow on the ski trail out back both Saturday and Sunday [March 11 and 12.] I could hear the snowmobiles going up the shoulder of the road out front while here at my computer.

» Continue Reading.


Saturday, March 11, 2023

Tales of babysitting a coon cat, fat flying squirrels, and unpredictable weather

Snow Bunting

This week stayed more like winter…or at least the ground was white. I did blow out the driveway a couple times, but after the first snowstorm there was nothing but a misty rain the following day which froze [and created] a sharp crust on the snow that night. I had a couple runs to Utica this week and one day it was 33 degrees the whole way with light rain but when I got to Deerfield Hill it was a whiteout. Then going down the other side I could see all of Utica. Coming home that night it was the same [temperature] (33 degrees) and light rain until I hit Old Forge. Then it went [down] to 29 degrees and [I had] an instant freeze on my windshield at the top of the summit. I’m glad it wasn’t that way all the way home.

» Continue Reading.



Conditions
Conditions

The Adirondack Almanack

The Adirondack Almanack is a public forum dedicated to promoting and discussing current events, history, arts, nature and outdoor recreation and other topics of interest to the Adirondacks and its communities

We publish commentary and opinion pieces from voluntary contributors, as well as news updates and event notices from area organizations. Contributors include veteran local writers, historians, naturalists, and outdoor enthusiasts from around the Adirondack region. The information, views and opinions expressed by these various authors are not necessarily those of the Adirondack Almanack or its publisher, the Adirondack Explorer.

General inquiries about the Adirondack Almanack should be directed to editor Melissa Hart. To advertise on the Adirondack Almanack, or to receive information on rates and design, please click here.
Web Services & Search Engine Optimization By: Suloff Designs

Wait! Before you go:

Catch up on all your Adirondack
news, delivered weekly to your inbox