Husband and I took the girls to an old haunt on the Maine coast Friday.  The sun was high, the tide was low, our oldest dog’s legs were sturdy.  Happy hearts.

Took these late last month.  Blurry but worth posting.  My favorite duck quacks are the ones that sounds like sardonic laughter.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Took camera in hand this weekend after far too long away from it.  I like its weight.  I like the narrow focus I’m forced to take when peering into the viewfinder.  I like the expansiveness and freedom of wandering in the woods looking and listening for just anything, or nothing.  I like that my neighbors don’t call the police when I am traipsing through the fields and woods at 8:15 am, almost certainly talking to myself, peering at frost-covered weeds and squinting into the sun, then circling a small tree like it might contain the answer to an important question.

I like wondering which birds are living in certain tree cavities, and waiting with cold cheeks (you pick which) for the resident to sneak a peak at me. I like that nobody tooted at me while I sat on the guardrail on Route 202 and snapped shots of geese picking their way across sheets of ice at the end of the lake.  Have you ever watched a goose walk on ice?  They seem to value careful foot placement as much as we do.

Sassy, seed hogging blue jays are back. I have made my peace with it.  They are hungry too.  If they don’t mind at least basic manners I will yell at them.

Hear the owls occasionally.  Don’t see them.  Somebody bought the abutting parcel – the spot I first found them this summer.  The new owner is busy piling brush into burn piles.  Sigh.

Was grateful that two immense deer were only on the edge of somebody’s lawn late one work night this week – not in front of my fender. Scary that my tired brain first processed their image as wolves – as in, “Why is there a very large wolf in the road right now?”

Our kitchen sink looks onto the back lawn, which turns into tree lines, which slopes down to lake. So when my hands are in the sink I watch the woods and the sky.  That is why Saturday morning at least one neighbor might have seen me standing in my backyard in a tank top and yoga pants trying to capture the eagle soaring overhead.  Eagles don’t wait for you to put on a jacket.  And the sun moves so fast at this time of year that when you decide the frost covered field looks amazing you jump out of bed and suit up – fast!  Next on my agenda is to learn to shoot into the sun.

In case you missed Monday’s supermoon.

Mushroom.  Lichen.   Tree rust?  Algae?  I don’t have specifics for you on any of these photos – though I would guess that some of you readers could help out.  In any event, I’ve found myself noticing the many shapes and colors that these “creatures” take with an increasing interest.

P.S. Lichen is not actually rot and it won’t hurt your trees.

Hooded mergansers on the far side of our cove for the past few weeks.

Muskrat feeding this afternoon.  There was a second one but it was too shy to smile for the camera.  The muskrats were in the area pictured below – which was underwater all summer.

Followed deer trails along the edge of the lake to work my way into the inlet without sinking up to my knees in muck.

Turned around after realizing that this immense stump would require me to use my broomstick to avoid a potentially dangerous slip into knee-deep muck.  Sadly, I’d left said broomstick at home, so I turned around.  (Note to my mother: gymnastics and dance class were worth it, because I can balance on rotten logs  quite well.)  I made it half-way around this stump before I gave up.  At some point in the process I did try to do a mental review of my “Get out of quicksand” skills and realized I didn’t have any.  What a let down.

Ruffed grouse crossing the road a quarter of a mile from our house.  Love the leg warmers!

And later, a pair of red-breasted mergansers (at the maximum of my zoom).

And always my friends the GBHs, right in my own lake-turned-lawn.

And my reward for traipsing through muck?

This.

Rain and fog today.  The lake is still busy with geese.   A lone duck was in the midst.  I watched him consider leaving the area, then return, and the climb onto the rocks that the geese had claimed for themselves.  I wanted to applaud him when he’d finally won the rock outcropping for himself.

I had my lens at full-zoom, and was shooting in the rain around 4:30, so photo quality is poor, but it was all that I could get today.  What a funny size difference between a goose (gander?) and what I think is probably a mallard.

I stepped onto our front porch half an hour okay to listen to the pair of great horned owls calling to each other from opposite sides of the woods.  An hour later they are still calling – and I’ve taken a few photos of the moon.

Easily 200 geese feeding in our cove tonight.  Sat in the padded divot at the bottom of a pine and rested my tired self against a trunk twice my size, then watched them paddle and listened to them chatter.  Was glad to be allowed to observe.

Although there seems to have been plenty of resources (weeds, bugs, water) to share without getting tense, the full-moon madness that has come over me seems to have a few of the geese on edge as well.

The pinks and yellows were especially pretty tonight.

I watched the geese for maybe 45 minutes, amused by their white bums in their air and their black legs and feet splashing and kicking to get them upside down and right side up again.

I always turn my back on the lake with reluctance, knowing the distance from shore to door is minimal, but the space between the calm I feel at the water’s edge and stress of the daily grind is a chasm too wide to bridge.