A friend just sent me the link to this youtube video and I would like to share it with all of you. Wish it was in my backyard.

We left camp on Sunday late in the afternoon.  This is usually a great time to spot some wildlife and we were not disappointed.

A baby osprey and its mom were in the nest at the swampy area in Coombs Brook. We have had the camp for ten years and the ospreys have nested here for at least nine of those years.

Ospreys are large raptors that can grow to about 24″ long with a wing span of about six feet. They are a fish eating bird and usually nest near the water. They build their nests in the tops of trees. I have read that nests are approx. 40″ in diameter and can weigh over 200 pounds! Ospreys mate for life and return to the same nest each year.

This baby is getting to be quite big and will probably be leaving the nest before long. We feel very fortunate to see the ospreys raising their family each year.

Driving down the road just a bit, I spot a young moose in the road. This one has no desire to move from the road and as I travel very slowly toward him, he just continues to meander down the road.

At this time of year, it is common to find these young moose out and about. Moose moms keep their young ones with them for about a year. About the time that the new babies are born, the mom sends the yearling off to live on its own. It must be a confusing time for the yearling because they seem to do a lot of wandering around aimlessly. We followed this guy for about three quarters of a mile to a cross road where he finally turned left.  As I continued to go straight and passed the cross road, I expected to see him continuing to walk down the middle of that road but he must have stepped into the woods at the side of the road because he was nowhere to be seen. How can something so large disappear so quickly?? 

Another reason that moose (large and small) are likely to be spotted on the roadways at this time of the year, is that they are trying to get away from the bugs that swarm around them.  This cow moose was in a swamp and not on the road but if you click on the photo to make it larger, you will see that her back end is covered with bugs.  Bet she wishes that she had some bug spray!

Other than a few bunnies, the rest of the trip home was uneventful. Unless you consider the young deer that ran in front of me right in the middle of Old Town in a very populated area. Since I was driving, I couldn’t take a photo but it nonchalantly headed through a lawn once it crossed. Gardeners in the area probably aren’t too fond of the deer.

Well, that was our trip home. I wish I could say that all were that neat but most are pretty boring with us seeing nothing but miles of dirt road. We keep looking though—we never know what we may see.

For most of the year, the moose just sort of grunts and is pretty quiet. When mating season comes around (September - October), they have a very eerie call. This is especially true if you are sleeping in a tent and hear this sound in the dead of the night.

While camping a few years back at Round Pound (T7 R14 WELS), we pitched a tent at the wilderness campsite at the end of the lake. There are lots of Round Ponds in Maine—this one is just south of Allagash Lake. Wilderness up there means just that. No campground attendants, no lights, no traffic—just us camping in the middle of the woods. During the night, we had moose walking within 25 feet of our tent. We also heard the eerie sound of a moose looking for a mate. Needless, to say it was difficult to sleep that night.

This is the sound that a moose makes. It is not a pretty sound! This sound can be heard for miles. Click HERE to hear what it sounds like and then just imagine being in a tent in the middle of the night and hearing this strange noise. A night like this is not for the faint of heart but this is one of the greatest memories of camping that I have.

Instead of trying to outrun predators, moose make themselves scarce — at least as scarce as a seven-foot-tall, 800 to 1200 pound animal can make itself.

We came upon this guy “hiding” while we were on our way to our camp one summer day.