Monday, 8:00 AM. 62 degrees, wind W, calm. The channel is mostly glassy. The barometer predicts clear skies, which are currently partly cloudy, with high, thin dark clouds. It is almost foggy on the east and south horizons. It looks like an unsettled day.Everyone is picking berries, at the farms, or in their yards. It is a bumper berry year.
Two hairy woodpeckers (couldn’t see them clearly but probably males) were beating their respective tattoos on a metal shield at the top of the wooden light pole on the corner of Tenth and Wilson. I don’t think it was a territorial challenge, it just looked like they were having a friendly jam session, ‘a la the ”dueling banjos” of the movie Deliverance.
Later: Took Lucky and went looking for wild raspberries this afternoon, and am sorry to say the crop doesn't look good. Only saw a few ripe berries and not an awful lot of green ones, and it looks as though it will take some rain and another week or two to have any berries to pick in my usual haunts on and near Echo Valley Road, which is nothing more than a dirt logging road through Bayfield County Forest land. We did come across a young bear, about my size but obviously in much better shape, but it was not a close encounter as we were already back in the truck, and the camera was not within reach. But, fighting our way through the underbrush to reach my secret raspberry patch I do think I actually smelled a bear, an experience which I have not had before. A little stinky, a lot wild, very distinctive and much too close for comfort. Or maybe I just stepped in bear poop. Who knows? Also saw a doe with two pretty spotted fawns.
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