Yesterday, around 7 am, I headed up River Road from Hanover to Lyme. It was a clear blue sky when I left home, but as I approached the river I was disappointed to see heavy fog. Fortunately, I persisted. The fog came and went as I headed north along River Road.
I saw something moving across the field to the east. It was a red fox. The fog was heavy and the light dim on this part of the field, so the photos I got were poor. But it was great to see it. Last spring I discovered a den of four cute fox kits. They were very fun to photograph.
Almost directly across the road from the fox I spotted an amazing fogbow. Closely related to rainbows, fogbows happen with the sun low in the sky behind the viewer. The higher the sun, the lower the fogbow. Because of the very small size of water droplets that cause fog, a fogbow has only very weak colors. In many cases, when the droplets are very small, fogbows appear white, and are therefore sometimes called “white rainbows”.
The photo at the top of this blog is a 180 degree view composed of seven individual photos. The photo below is a single photo taken with a 14mm (eq) lens. My head is along a straight line from the sun to the center of the fogbow. That is the way rainbows and fogbows work.
If you want to see more fogbows and other interesting things in the sky, please CLICK HERE and a page will open in a new tab.
At the broad mouth of Grant Brook, I could barely make out the ducks in the fog. I had to process the images quite a bit to get something to show.
Here are some Wood Ducks in the fog.
I was surprised to see a somewhat unusual Common Goldeneye.
A pair of Common Mergansers were fishing together. They came fairly close to me. You can see the male caught a good-sized fish.
Eventually, the fog lifted. Wood Ducks raced across a cove, not sure why. They certainly were not reacting to me. If they would have been, they likely would have flown.
They looked nice in the early light. Wish they would have been closer
I looped back through VT seeing little I wanted to photograph, except for a Red-winged Blackbird above the Ompompanoosuc River.
It is great that we can get out and enjoy nature responsibly. I saw no one in NH and only three people birding from cars in VT.
My daughter who lives in New Zealand relates that they are being very strict there. Only car trips to the grocery store or hospital are permitted. When they want to go for walk, they need to do it from home. I think the result will be a much better experience with COVID there than we are unfortunately experiencing in the US.