Adair Mulligan led a snowshoe hike to the Hanover Conservancy Tunis Mill site in NE Hanover on a beautiful warm winter afternoon Sunday. It was an easy hike with lots of animal tracking information by Adair.
Linde tried to take my photo with her phone. But I quickly drew my weapon and fired away capturing these two photos.
Adair found some snowshoe hare tracks and stopped to discuss how the hare twice digests its food.
When bounding, the snowshoe hare’s front feet land first and then its rear feet land in front of the front feet. So the hare in the photo below was moving left to right. The small circle is its front feet, and the pair of large prints are its rear feet tracks.
Adair explained the bounding motion to us.
We crossed a stream on a small bridge with a very suspect hand rail. It might be fine for holding on gently, but it would likely not prevent a fall into the stream. Fortunately the fall would have been short.
Adair found a Ruffed Grouse roost. When the grouse departed it left behind some “luggage” as Adair called it.
Meanwhile I was photographing some interesting trees.
We got to the Tunis Mill site and learned it likely operated for only 10 to 20 years in the late 18th/early 19th centuries. A wetland upstream was perhaps dammed to hold water for when the mill needed to saw logs. A flood possibly destroyed the mill, but some stonework remains.
Adair led us to an amazing glacial erratic nearby.
We circled the erratic and Adair pointed out one of her, and my, favorite ferns growing on it — polypodies.
We hiked to a multi-trunked red maple. It was possibly harvested and the trunks grew out of the circumference of the stump.
We sprinted back to Goose Pond Road for hot chocolate and cookies. This was a great way to spend an afternoon before a hike with my wife and a Birthday dinner.
If you would like to see photos from a 2013 trip to the same area, you can CLICK HERE.