The only independent, nonprofit news organization solely dedicated to reporting on the Adirondack Park.
By Phil Brown
Mike Lynch, an outdoors writer for the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, took this photo of a garter snake eating a toad near Raquette Falls last week. On his blog True North,Mike says it took the snake about a half-hour to swallow the amphibian. He posted a later photo on his blog that shows only the toad’s…
By Phil Brown
A state forest ranger last week killed a black bear that had been harassing people at the Eighth Lake State Campground. This was the first nuisance bear shot by the state this year. In 2009, state officials killed seven bears (a camper killed an eighth). Clickhere to read the full story in the Adirondack Daily…
By Phil Brown
Earlier this week, I posted on Adirondack Almanack an article about mountain lions. It includes a photo of a plaster cast of a paw print sent me by Don Leadley, a veteran outdoorsman. Leadley says he tracked the beast for about a mile near his home in Lake Pleasant. Do mountain lions exist in the…
By Phil Brown
I paddled the Jessup and Kunjamuk rivers near Speculator this weekend and saw lots of wildflowers on the banks and in the water, including cardinal flowers, pickerelweed, buttonbush, and pond lilies. I need some help identifying the flowers shown here. The purplish flower was photographed on the Kunjamuk in a marsh above Elm Lake. I saw…
By Phil Brown
The common loon is an icon of the North Woods, a symbol of wilderness, and sometimes the object of harassment. On June 12, two teenage boys frightened a loon off its nest on Sixth Lake, in Inlet, and struck the nest with a canoe paddle, breaking an egg, according to the state Department of Environmental…
By Phil Brown
Crown Point photographer Seth Lang was driving on Lake Shore Road between Wesport and Essex yesterday when he spotted a large timber rattlesnake in the road. Timber rattlers are a threatened species in New York State. This specimen was all black. “It was stretched across the lane as I swerved around it,” Seth e-mailed me.…
By Phil Brown
Lindsay Facteau recently sent us this photo of a wildflower that she and her boyfriend found along the road in Duane in the northern Adirondacks. “I thought this flower was a trumpet flower, but looking at other flowers, I guess I was wrong,” she said in an e-mail. “Can you tell me the name of…
By Phil Brown
Ed Ketchledge, the man responsible for saving the alpine vegetation in the High Peaks, died on Wednesday at eighty-five. Ketchledge taught or touched the lives of many of the scientists working in the Adirondacks. He also authored the book Forests and Trees of the Adirondack High Peaks Region, which many hikers use to identify trees…
By Phil Brown
Last weekend I paddled with our publisher, Tom Woodman, on four ponds south of Floodwood Road. Tom wrote about our trip for the Explorer’s Adirondack Dispatches blog, so I won’t cover the same ground (or water, rather). I’m just taking the opportunity to post a photo of one of my favorite wildflowers, blue flag. I…
By WINNIE YU It is day two of the Hamilton County Birding Festival, and my husband, Jeff Scherer, and I are riding with Joan Collins and Judith Harper in the Moose River Plains. The plains are notable for the large diversity of habitats, which include bogs, open plains, boreal forests, hardwoods, and mountaintops of spruce.…