This Past Week in Mostly Photos

 Hi everyone. The weekend is here. It's once again going to be on the chilly side  here in New Hampshire. 

This past week we had  a mix of weather again. With snow and rain on Monday and then some more very cold temperatures, we now have lots of ice.  Last year I was lucky and able to walk through most of January, but this year in order to walk I'd need ice skates. Smile.

I've had to find some other ways to get in my outside time, so I took a couple of drives.

The most exciting drive I took was on Wednesday. I was down at the coast for my allergy shots, and since I was in the general neighborhood, I decided to drive to Salisbury State Reservation right over the border into Massachusetts.

I had 2 reasons to drive here. First, this is a big area where snowy owls  are seen, and I've been hoping to see one. Second of all, the tide was in, making the beaches very narrow, but this state park has other trails where I could walk. The coast didn't get any snow in our early in the week storm, so trails would work for walking. 

Of course I got there and even though the thermometer in my car read 42 degrees F (5.5 degrees C) , the wind was right off the North Atlantic, and it was biting cold.  My walk was short, but the trip was not wasted by any means.

This owl kept swiveling their head back and forth, probably wondering why a small crowd  gathered . When I left that morning I grabbed my camera that had my 18-400mm lens on it (I just leave that one on as it is really flexible). I just wished I had brought my big lens with me, but I honestly didn't expect to need it.

There are some owls this year, but it's not a year when we have a lot of them in the area. This next photo is not cropped at all the make the owl larger. It is pretty much the view I saw.

 And besides the snowy owl (Bubo scandiacus), I also had another nice bird sighting.

This hawk was obviously hunting not too high off the ground.

I know there's a lot of photos, but I'm really pleased to have caught these in flight views.  Birds in flight, especially this slow hunting flight style, is really fascinating, don't you think?

I did some online research to try to identify this bird, and I came up with Northern Harrier. If that's what it is, it would be a first one of this species for me. The reservation in Salisbury is a huge area for birders, and I noticed that someone who links up bird sightings mentioned they also saw one on the same day I was there. Here's the link  too that: Recent bird sightings, Salisbury Beach Reservation.

David if you read this, perhaps you could confirm because as I have said before, I am not very good at hawks.

I took a few more scenery photos that I will share another day.

The other drive was up to the big lake near my home. There were no birds of notice, but the ice fishing is getting into full swing. I suspect that by the time of this post there will be a lot more fishing shacks out on the bay.

The ice runway is also laid out, but it wasn't opened yet. I took these early in the week, so I bet with the cold we've had, they might be able to land planes now. By the way, this is an FAA official small airport, not just a random landing strip. I must say I get a kick out of the fact that this area actually has an ice airport. I'm not sure it actually delivers people to the area, but a lot of small planes take off and land, most likely to say they have done it.

A different type of arty thing I did this past week was wind some yarn into balls so I can knit a vest. This device (if you aren't familiar with it) is called a yarn swift. On the left you can just make out the ball winder. 

Some yarn you buy is ready to use in a modified ball, but some comes in hanks. For those you who don't knit or crochet, a hank is a loop of yarn (like you can see in my above photo) that is twisted  in a figure 8 kind of shape. There are also a couple of little pieces of yarn holding the loop together. If you didn't wind a hank into a ball before using it, you would spend more time untangling it than you would knitting or crocheting.

You can see some of the yarn I balled this week here. There is one semi-hand wound ball on the back right, and a yarn I wound using my yarn winder on the left.

I am excited to start knitting my vest. I'll show you more as it gets done.

Thanks for getting through this rather long post. And I hope you enjoy your weekend.