Wild Neighbors Nature Connection

This is shoulder season birding at its finest! Feeling thankful to spend time with one of my favorite feathered neighbors in the northern Adirondacks. It really is a marvel how wondrously adapted woodpeckers like this black-backed woodpecker are to the arboreal life; prop of a tail, toes like grappler hooks, beak like a chisel, and that’s not all! Don’t you just love how the black-backed woodpecker’s plumage blends so well among the shadows in our enchanted coniferous forest understory?

What a fantastic three day backpacking trip in collaboration with bewilderpgh and John Creasy. We explored nature’s connections while hiking two of New York’s highest mountains, Marcy and Algonquin. We camped at Feldspar Brook and Lake Colden. We also made a visit to Lake Arnold. We enjoyed close encounters with curious boreal chickadees and a Bicknell’s thrush content to pluck mountain ash berries right off the tree while we looked on from about twenty yards. The uniquely adapted plants and lichens of the alpine tundra zone included worm lichen, diapensia, deer hair sedge, and more! While we were there flocks of American pipits foraged about the anorthosite boulders and low growing vegetation. It was a challenging, satisfying, and transformational experience for all. Now we are in the mountains and the mountains are in us.