Long Lake Yarns

Walking on a two-track, on state land near Sorenson Road, we came upon these Wild Turkey  tracks in the sand.  Wild Turkeys were nearly eliminated from their habitat by the early 1900’s.  Paradoxically, hunters helped save them. In 1973, the National Wild Turkey Federation was formed.  It is both a hunting organization and a conservation [...]

I have been reading up on what this is.  It’s in one of the white pines very close to the main entrance to the house.   This is a baldfaced hornet nest.   We noticed it about two weeks ago, which is when people often spot them (late summer, early fall).  That’s when the nest [...]

Just in case you thought I was going all sweetness and light, gushing in the last post about the beauty of the local sunflowers, whataya think of this beastie?  Hideous, isn’t she?  We weren’t trying to bribe her to find another patio stone to slime, we  just wanted to show how fat and long Ms. [...]

Last winter, when this photo was taken from our great room window, we were amazed to see this guy.  He’s supposedly shy.  Wary.  Needs lots of elbow room–something like 400 acres per bird.  Yipes. We felt  honored he trusted our suet. He soon became a regular visitor, late in the day, after the riff raff [...]

This is the biggest toad I’ve ever seen in Michigan.  He was about 4 inches long and 3 inches wide. He was sitting on a patio stone by the side door of  the cottage.  I didn’t  know what variety of toad he was.  I imagined he was maybe the my-head-is-so-big-I-can’t-lift-it-off-my-fingers toad.  Or the inward-facing-three-toed toad.  Maybe [...]

We watched this big guy just after he’d emerged from his nymph stage and was drying his wings for several minutes on our lawn.  You can find out more about the nymph stage by watching this video on the life cycle of the dragonfly.  Let’s just say that the end stage is the best–no more [...]

Ok, so you’re cute.  But they gave me the kerchief to wear because I’m better than cute.  I have a job around here.   I’ll teach you how it’s done, because cute doesn’t last forever.  I see the size of those paws.  You’ll need  to earn your keep.  Lay low at first.  Let them get [...]

As a child and teenager, I’d fished with my dad for about two weeks each summer while we rented a cottage near Zink’s Point on Elk Lake.  I liked that, quite a bit, and never more than when others were catching fish and I was just getting bites and not hooking them.  My dad babied [...]

As you can tell from the snow on the Hillman airport, this is not yesterday’s (Father’s Day) eagle photo.  Yesterday no camera captured the drama on the west shore of the big part of Long Lake, not far from the narrows.  We watched from our dock on the eastern shore. “Look, that’s a bald eagle flying over [...]

When you paddle in to Ghost Bay quietly in your kayak, sometimes you are rewarded by seeing stuff you definitely don’t see down state. I’d met this family on an earlier visit. Then, the three kits were stacked up neatly and vertically like the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” [...]