Last weekend, it was so bitterly cold that I didn't leave the house at all. This weekend, it was so nice outside I couldn't wait to get out. Friends were feeling similarly, and a bunch of us got together last night to celebrate the fact that the weather hadn't trapped us in our homes for a change. It felt great to be out, and seeing people in the ( Read more... )

The lovely October-like weather we've been having got even better today. Sunny and in the high 50's. Who knows how many more nice Saturdays there'll be until spring? So I headed over to the wildlife refuge and rambled about in the woods and around the pond.


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The male cardinal finally deigned to show himself and allow me to take his portrait. I wonder if it's the same one that woke me with his warbling at 4:30 in the morning last summer ( Read more... )

I've been trying to get out walking every day, and most days I succeed. Unless it's bone-chilling cold, or precipitating heavily, I go out for a walk. I downloaded an app that tracks my walks (Walkmeter, suggested by lamentables), and I've found that I'm walking farther than I had estimated. Yesterday I walked 3.32 miles, and I had previously estimated that ( Read more... )

It's been relatively mild all week, and yesterday was bright & sunny so I went for a nice long walk over at the Assabet Wildlife Refuge.



It was a perfect day for walking in the woods. This time I stuck to the forest trails, and found all sorts of interesting lichens, mosses, and fungi.

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Yesterday was a pretty nice day (for December in New England), and I wanted to get outside and moving around. I opened up Google Maps on my iPad and tooled around, looking for someplace different. I decided on Callahan State Park in Marlborough, which I'd been to once before, but then I noticed that the Wayside Inn was nearby and decided to stop ( Read more... )

I tend to think of November as a rather bleak month. It gets dark alarmingly early, most of the trees are bare now, and the weather is far from charming. As it turns out, there is much out there still to interest an amateur naturalist and photographer ( Read more... )

Nice, if a bit windy, day today. It was nice to not have to bundle up to go outside. I went over to Gates Pond for a walk, but the batteries in my camera died just as I got there. Oh, well! I did take another walk along the rail trail after stopping at CVS for more batteries, but there wasn't a whole lot worth taking pictures of there, except for ( Read more... )