Winter Sunrise Over the Coves

This is how sunrise looked at 6:30 AM this morning out our front door. It was pinker than this photo shows. In the very foreground you can see the edge of my koi ponds. They have ice on them, but there is a little pump to keep a small area clear of it. Then there are thorny raspberry and blackberry bushes as well as wild roses and the land falls about 40 - 50 feet (12- 15 meters) off into a meadow with small trees and bushes where turkeys, foxes, deer, raccoons, and various other wildlife live. Song birds love the fruiting bushes and we also have woodpeckers and hawks. You can see we still have a little snow on the ground and the temperature was about 20 degrees Fahrenheit (-6.7 Celsius).

Towards Pratt Cove, a fresh water tidal marsh and also the curving body of water that is predominate in the view, the land is wetland and swampy and there is a train track for a scenic railway. We can just see the antique train as it goes by with tourists in the summer months. The cove itself sees kayakers, canoers, and other small boaters. Duck hunters come during the season. The cove is rife with water birds and we see eagles notably in the winter and some are resident year round. There are even some birds in the photo, but I'm not sure you will be able to see them.

Around the cove is a protected wetland where wild rice and various other wetland plants grow. In times before Europeans came to the Americas, the Native Americans used to harvest the wild rice from their canoes.

Beyond the wild rice area is a string of trees growing on spoils that were thrown up by dredging from a marina you can't see that is on the left of the photo. (You can't see it because we let trees on our property grow up to cover it.) Those trees were not that big when we moved in over ten years ago. Anyhow, through those trees is the Connecticut River.

We own a little more than 9 acres of land and have water views like this on much of it. You cannot see any houses in this photo, but that is because of the poor lighting and there are actually a couple in the distance but they are not easily seen. We feel we live in paradise. In the future I will take more photos of our property and try to get more stunning photos of sunrises as well.