Monthly Archives: November 2023

Thanks for Croft, 2023

I decided to spend Thanksgiving at my favorite place for a “little” walk in the woods, Croft State Park. Ok, “little” is a relative term, I spend basically the whole day following trails.

I like to get an early start.

We have lots of Robins around this time of year (for those of you up North, this is where they go in the winter).

Getting pictures of birds up in the trees isn’t easy. This one got away.

Holly berries were widespread.

After walking through the woods for a couple hours, it’s a bit jarring to come across something like this.

Fortunately, they do give some warning.

The area between the lakes.

A day doesn’t get much bluer than this (Lake Johnson is still low after maintenance earlier this year).

It was getting well into the afternoon by the time I got to the Beech Tree Trail, which I know has a lot of elevation change in a short distance, so, take the short route back, or go for it? What would Molly do? I went for it. There are places it’s better to not look up, but look down after you complete the climb.

The route on Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/10270869622.

Creature Feature 2023 #5

It was a really nice late fall day today, and one that made me think about getting out on the lake one more time this season, even though there was some wind making the lake a bit choppy. No matter, on to the lake!

Any time there’s good sun on a cool day the turtles will be out.

This big white guy (duck? goose?) seemed intent on crashing the duck party:

I’m not sure how this picture happened, I saw some ducks on approach and started shooting (with the camera, of course):

Splash down! This is what I was wanting to get:

There were several large groups of Canada Geese around. One took off near me:


I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, just when I think I’ve seen about everything the lake has to offer, I see something new. I don’t remember ever seeing an American Coot here before:

And for the obligatory Great Blue Heron picture… I passed a Heron who was almost hidden in the brush along the shore, and figured I’d gotten by without disturbing him. Then he took off, flew past and ahead of me before I could grab the camera, but then he circled back towards me. I got a lot of camera frames from his fly-by, making it hard to pick the ones I wanted to post. Imagine flying on those big wings!


And I wished him well as he flew south towards the sun; looks like something out of “Jonathan Livingston Heron”…

The trip on Strava.