What's for dinner?

[beanbag]

Son of Beanbag and I have been out commission as of late, but we got some much needed woods time last weekend, and saw a lot of wildlife.

Lets just say if we were shooting bullets instead of pictures, we'd of had a big ole fat holiday season.

Gobble gobble Martha Folker:

These three were very cooperative and posed for a picture. Like I said, lucky for them we were only packing a Panasonic Lumix:

There were a lot of blow-downs from the freak October snow storm, and still some good color:

Hello Dear:

Got Birch?

This guy was in the high brush and we almost walked right past him/her:

 

[sicily02]

Stunning pics BeanBag.

 

[beanbag]

Stunning pics BeanBag.

Thanks.

Those pics were from Saturday. We went back out Sunday for some mountain bike action.

Once again we got lucky again with the wildlife sightings. I think this is a Red Tailed Hawk, but I'm not sure because it was so big. The picture is on full zoom from about 40 yards or so. After the picture was taken he swooped down through the trees- very cool sight.

 

[pitdog]

Great pics in both posts buddy, cool seeing wildlife so close up eh !

 

[beanbag]

Great pics in both posts buddy, cool seeing wildlife so close up eh !

Thanks.

Over the years what I've come to realize is if you want to see wildlife close up, you've got to log a lot of woods hours.:thumbup:

 

[uyotg]

Wow, these are awesome. How long were you out each time and how much ground did you cover? Seems like every time I go somewhere, I only see one animal the whole trip Not sure if chipmunks count they're everywhere. I mean something more substantial, like a group of turkeys, a huge hawk or a huge owl, or one deer here or there.

 

[JV3]

the pics are pure sweetness! speaking of mtb, the first race of h2h series '12 is at blue mountain in april...i want to ride with you guys before then to get the locals' tricks and tips

 

[beanbag]

How long were you out each time and how much ground did you cover?

When I said you've got to log a lot of woods hours to see wildlife, that may be somewhat misleading. We were only out for about 1.5 hours (After all I had a 12 year-old boy in tow) and we didn't cover as much ground as we intended because of all the animals we came upon.

I guess what I really meant is that if you want to discover the wonders of nature, you have to get out a lot, not necessarily stay out for long periods of time. Oh, and you got to get lucky.

Since the start of the year, between Hiking, camping, snowshoeing, cross country skiing, kayaking and mountain biking , I've probably been out close to 50 times, the bulk being close to home.. I've seen four or five hawks, a red fox, coyotes, some other kind of fox, a bald eagle (which swooped in from behind me to grab a dead fish I was kayaking over to check out and plucked it up with its talons no more than 10 yards in front of me), countless deer, turkeys, turkey buzzards, snakes and lots of other stuff that I'm probably forgetting.

the pics are pure sweetness! speaking of mtb, the first race of h2h series '12 is at blue mountain in april...i want to ride with you guys before then to get the locals' tricks and tips

Wow, Blue is early this year. Come on out once the leafs get flattened.

 

[uyotg]

When I said you've got to log a lot of woods hours to see wildlife, that may be somewhat misleading. We were only out for about 1.5 hours (After all I had a 12 year-old boy in tow) and we didn't cover as much ground as we intended because of all the animals we came upon.

Nope, totally understood. The more ground you can cover in a short amount of time, the more you'll see. To exaggerate it to the extremes, it'd be like taking an omniscient snapshot of the area in one instant, or like pausing the world and taking your time to go everywhere and see everything. Of course humans aren't capable of that, so that's why we can only get lucky seeing a few things at a time, if at all. But here you are with a bunch of animals in just two days, so I figure you were going really fast on those bikes!

 

[uyotg]

Oh, and where was this? Harriman or Bear Mountain, maybe? I'm in NYC and go to those parks often myself.
I was also thinking of getting a Panasonic Lumix TS2, real durable and waterproof I hear. Since the TS3 came out though it's like the whole world's TS2s suddenly disappeared, even used ones.

 

[Joezilla]

turkey were the only thing I saw in my stand today