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Just popping in with a New Year's newsletter! I hope it finds you well, and I hope you had a wonderful holiday season with friends and family.
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Winter is upon us here in Maine. Ice skaters and ice fisherman are happy to find our lakes smoothly frozen over after the last freezing rain. But sadly, we've very little snow. At this writing, there's no hope for any in the forecast either. My middle school students who snowmobile and ski, are anxiously waiting their turn to play. As am I! Wildlife watching in the winter is such a treat. Tracking animals in the snow, making snowmen who feed the birds, snowshoeing through a quiet forest while snowflakes gently fall to the place where eagles are adding to their nest, there is so much to enjoy. And then there was that time I found a newly dug fox den!
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I do love my Maine winters.
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That's why Cooper and Packrat's fifth adventure, Lost Lynx is set in the winter at Wilder Family Campground. Cooper wants to have a winter festival with friends, so he convinces his parents to open their campground over February school vacation. But things get complicated. First they spy a lynx kit wearing a pet collar, and then they're warned about a dangerous poacher hunting nearby.
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I enjoyed researching and writing about the amazing winter activities we enjoy in the Northeast. There are so many, I actually had to list them out so I could pick and choose the ones that best fit my characters and the plot's mystery. They would need to move the story along. Was there an activity that was new to me? You bet! I discovered skijoring! Oh, how I wish I'd known about it when my pup Cookie was young!
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Over the next few weeks Shannon and I will be reading Mystery of the Lost Lynx in our classroom. I'm so excited to share it with our readers! Especially the inspiration behind it and how it came to be a winter story which is very different from the other four adventures. Are you curious, too? You'll find the answer below.
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Read on to find some of my favorite winter wildlife photos from past treks, hear about my latest adult book recommendation, The Frozen River, and learn about the day I found an otter while hiking our campground trails.
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Winter Wildlife Photography
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Click on any of the photos below
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Seeking out winter wildlife with my camera isn't quite as easy as looking for summer wildlife. Not only do some of our wildlife migrate or hibernate, others travel from place to place under the snow.
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Sometimes the wildlife comes to me. I have bird feeders out back that I fill every day. Of course this attracts other wildlife too, like the owl, turkeys and fox you see below.
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And sometimes I make little snow people to have fun winter photo shoots. (More about that in my February newsletter!)
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I also go out in search of something to photograph, as I do in the other seasons. When readers at school and library visits ask if my equipment in winter is different, I tell them that I use the same camera and monopod. But I trade my t-shirt and shorts for a winter coat and jeans. Instead of sneakers, I wear boots and snowshoes.
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The fun part of hiking in the winter? I can track my subjects! I use a handy pocket track guide from The Maine Wildlife Park in Gray, Maine to tell me which tracks the animals belong to. It stays in my camera bag year round. And, of course, I also look for signs!
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Sometimes, I snowshoe for an hour or more and don't see anything. On a good day, I'll at least see the signs of wildlife. Those signs help me learn more about the animals. Over time, I learn where they'll be at a certain times of year and maybe, just maybe I'll even catch a glimpse of animals like this porcupine and otter! The picture above the otter is their very distinctive track; they slide, walk, slide, walk. Read on to hear about my adventure finding the otter.
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STALKING OTTER
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If anyone had watched me stalking otter back in 2017, they would have laughed and wondered why I was playing Red Light, Green Light out in the middle of nowhere.
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Back then, the campground's shoreline included a long skinny piece of land that jutted out into Lower Range Pond. It’s really all that's left of an old cart road going through Poland, Maine toward the Poland Spring Inn before Route 26 was built. It's no bigger than a footpath wide.
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Whenever I'd snowshoe our trail, I'd stop at the beginning of that footpath (lower right of the photo above) and glance toward the open water. If I thought I'd seen an otter, I'd take off my squeaky snowshoes, stand them beside a tree and wait. I knew from past treks that no matter how far away I thought I was, if I moved too much, or too close, that otter would dive and slip away, never to return again that day.
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Before this particular day I'd snapped interesting photos of the otter, but they were always dark and grainy because of the distance. I longed for close ups. Crisp photos with lots of detail that I could zoom in on and crop. So this day, I decided to add the extension to my already long camera lens, and I lugged my cloak of invisibility (a camouflaged colored poncho I threw over me. It has a hole for the camera lens). This was no small feat . . . it’s heavy!
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In my research, I'd learned otters have very good hearing, but their eyesight is not so good. This is where the sneaky part comes in. Whenever the otter was on the ice looking in the water for his next meal, I'd stand perfectly still.
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The minute he slipped in after something, I’d quickly walk closer and closer to that patch of open water, cracking and crunching through the snow. When he climbed out onto the ice to munch his lunch, I'd freeze. Go silent.
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Can you now imagine the game of Red Light, Green Light I was playing?
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This went on for about 15 to 20 minutes before I felt I was close enough. On his next dive, I raced forward as close as I could get to the edge of the trees, facing his favorite hole in the ice. I ducked behind some bushes, threw the cloak over me and my camera, and tried to quiet my beating heart.
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Still not as crisp as I’d hoped, but closer!
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Look at this otter chow down! I swear he did nothing but eat that day! And I remember wondering where on earth he “put it all”. It makes sense though when you hear that an otter's body digests food in only an hour.
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I sat there for close to two hours that day, just focusing on him. And while I still wasn’t as close as these pictures make it seem, I can use my camera lens like binoculars to observe and take note of his behaviors.
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What I loved most, is how he used his front feet to hold the fish. From what I read, otters will also eat freshwater mussels, large water beetles, crabs, crayfish, bird eggs (this could explain why some loons eggs go missing in the Spring), fish eggs, and small mammals (muskrats, mice, young beavers). So far, I’ve only seen them eat fish. Lots and lots of fish.
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I'm no longer owner of that little strip of land. I do miss it this time of year! But I’m content with the research I gained back then, those lovely hours of solitude by the edge of the wintering lake, and the memories that'll always be with me.
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You can be sure, he’ll end up in a book sometime.
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Read And Read S'more!
The Frozen River was the last adult fiction book I read in 2024 and it was amazing. Set in Maine along the frozen Kennebec River, this book was inspired by the life and diary of Martha Ballard, who was a renowned 18th-century midwife and healer.
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Through a series of events in Hallowell, Martha feels she must investigate the murder of a prominent member of town, who is also an alleged rapist. Her diary becomes the center of the investigation, even though some of the clues point to those she loves.
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I read this novel in two nights! Martha is a likeable, strong, caring and intelligent character. If you like mysteries, Maine stories, and stories with historical pieces, you'll like The Frozen River.
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Did You Know?
Did you know that I started writing Mystery of the Lost Lynx with a Spring setting? At the time, I was working virtually with Allyson Maiollo's Florida classroom and we'd been comparing Maine wildlife to Florida wildlife. It was the winter of 2018-19. I was home unexpectedly from school one day and offered to zoom with her readers. Of course they were very, very curious as to why I'd gotten out of going to school.
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"I got a snow day call this morning," I told them.
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"What's a snow day?" they asked.
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I couldn't speak for a minute. What's a snow day? Then it hit me! They'd probably never experienced snow! Or snow angels. Snowmen. Downhill skiing. Cross country skiing. Snowboarding!
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I turned my laptop toward my window to show them the blizzard roaring outside. And oh, the questions they had! Is snow always sticky? Could I really stand on the lake? How do you ice fish? How long does a snowman last? What was the most snow I'd ever experienced?
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Try explaining The Blizzard of 78 to someone who's never seen more than a dusting of snow!
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Seeing winter through Allyson's students' eyes was so much fun. They reminded me that not everyone gets to experience an epic snowball fight, to whizz down a hill on a sled, or to wake up and find out you've been granted a snow day.
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I knew then Lost Lynx had to be set in the winter, so I could show readers in the warmer climates just how amazing Maine can be when the snow falls.
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And maybe, just maybe, I could surprise my winter loving Maine readers to a cool, new-to-them activity!
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