It's Meltin-g-g-g-g-g-g-g

One thing about a mid-March snowstorm. The after effects don't linger as long as if it were mid-winter. 

Not that there isn't still plenty to go around. Can't walk to most places that I usually like to go...

On the other hand the wrens survived and new migrants are appearing every day....a Purple Finch yesterday. 

Becky bought me new glasses this week...been wearing the same ones for around fifteen years or so. I like them.....although the ground seems to be farther away than it used to be. Sure can see the birds and trees better!

Hopping down the bunny trail....

Otherwise not much for excitement. We saw a big police presence on the bike path yesterday as they stopped snowmobiles to look them over. Must be most of them were in compliance as they were going on their way. I don't begrudge them their fun. It has been a really open winter up until now. Wish they would be careful though...so many deaths this year...and stay off the lakes!

The Dregs of the Dervish

Click me, click me!

Sometimes after a storm the light will stagger you with beauty, plumb blind you with excess brightness, then throw a veil over your vision, with blowing snow causing white-outs that sometimes dismay and bamboozle you. We stayed home during the worst of the aftermath..... then ventured into the dregs of the dervish.

Sometimes it IS easy being Green

Or at least wearing green. I am sporting the Argosy Casino , Hotel and Spa sweatshirt Liz brought me home from a National Farmers Organization meeting in Missouri a few years back. Although green is one of my favorite colors for some reason I don't seem to have much in the way of green clothing. We did have our corned beef the other day though.....

Been saving the photo above since we visited Daphne, Alabama late last year....just waiting for today to share it. This was growing in the park we visited there.

Anyhow, Happy St. Patrick's Day to everyone, Irish or otherwise.....with all those McGiverns and McIntoshes back there in the pedigree I can wear my green shirt legitimately.

Yesterday I rode up to Bass Pro in Auburn with Alan and then the boss took me out around town for a bit. On the way west we saw so much evidence of the seriousness of the storm...it was downright sobering. An overturned semi, wheels toward the road, just left there awaiting resources to move it. Another semi, thirty feed off the road, with no tracks anywhere around it so it had been there a while....and the poor driver was still sitting inside it waiting for help. They were finally removing it when we came back east. Hundreds...literally....of power company trucks convoying east....

Roads everywhere were thronged with birds, assorted blackbirds, Snow Buntings, Horned Larks and even a single Eastern Meadowlark. I have read reports of Woodcocks struggling and starving all over the state and haven't seen or heard our Carolina Wrens in two days. Normally they are among the first birds I hear every morning and visit the feeders off and on all day. This is going to be bad for the early migrants I'm afraid.

Horned Lark on a snowbank up by Bichler's old farm

Lookit This!!!!

Right under the feeder today!

Not much to Sing About

Before the tempest

Today's other post was actually written yesterday..... 

And then.....After the fun with little birdies was over and the sun went down, news about storm damage began to trickle in.

Several barns collapsed. So sorry for the folks involved. Cows had to be moved but at this point we don't know much more. Farmers all over the region were forced to dump milk, as roads were impassable and trucks outlawed in some areas. This was a terrible, awful, nasty bad storm.

Then as I sat in my chair, done for the day, glad of it and looking at my phone, stories began to pop up from town. They were not good news.

Fultonville Methodist Church, a lovely and iconic white board building just a couple of blocks from where we used to live in town, was on fire.

Although we never attended services there, the kids went to an after school program there that they really enjoyed. Friends got married there. People we know well live on the street and their homes were threatened. We could see the flames from the living room.

It was a sad night.

When the going gets Tough

Yes, it was snowing that hard....

Yesterday the birds were so desperate that we often had thirty or forty Brown-headed Cowbirds at the feeder, seventy-five Red-winged Blackbirds, three pairs of Northern Cardinals, and dozens upon dozens of others. It was as if more and more of them kept pouring in all day, as the word got out about the seeds.

I kept filling the feeders all day as the snow piled up and the hordes emptied them. Around noon I went out for the forth time to find a half a dozen Black-capped Chickadees hurriedly diving in while I was there...they are not afraid of me and the other birds are...in hopes of getting at least a couple of seeds. However, the feeder was empty.

I filled my hand with sunflower seeds....within seconds one was perched in my palm grabbing one. That is desperation. I have coaxed them to eat from my hand before, but it has always taken a long, cold wait in stillness, until some bold individual snatched a seed and fled. This one sat on my hand long enough for me to feel his tiny weight and wonder at such trust and such hunger.

I didn't want to tease them when they were so hungry, so I filled the feeder and came back inside. Whenever I went out to shovel out the door so we could still get out of the house, they all rushed in to eat while the other birds fled.

And then it got so bad that even the wilder birds utterly ignored me while I worked. Not a good storm at all.

Contrast

February 18th

Same view today

It was Still too Dark to See

When I first went out, but the birds were already looking for food.

The river shore in front of the house was packed with Canada Geese. American Tree Sparrows were jingling, picking at the seed balls and fighting the cardinals for the trays.

Now there are so many assorted blackbirds the box elders look like Halloween Christmas trees.

Because snow. A lot of snow. I came downstairs between four and five, and the boss, who takes Becky to work between three and four said, "It hasn't started yet."

However, I had just passed the stair landing window...and it had. Now it is snowing fine sparkly snow, very pretty in the glow from the yard lights. There is already at least three inches and it supposed to get a lot worse.

Every job that anyone works at off the farm is shut down for the day....except one. Jade is off anyhow, as it is his regular day off, but the trucking company he works for told the other drivers to stay home.

Mappy and Alan are both home from their construction jobs in the big cities. Too much snow. I am thankful they were both able to make the drive before this all got started!

The boss has wood piled up and under canvas and the kids have extra hay in the barns and stables so everyone can be fed without starting the skid steer.

However, one of the crew had to go to work and will have to get home somehow in what will probably be the worst of the storm. All those truckers holed up in the village truck stops, all the people pulling off the Interstate for respite, all the locals who like the good coffee she makes, are relying on Becky and the rest of the crew at our local McDonald's to have the sammiches and milk shakes and coffee going.

And so they are. And before you pick on a college graduate for working fast food....she can't see well enough to safely drive so she needed a job within a mile or so of the house.....and she has worked her way up to manager too. No complaints from this quarter.

In other news friends of Ralph lost their machine shed in a nasty fire yesterday. Neighbors and local businesses rallied, so even though they lost feeding equipment, tractors and some hay, they should be able to get the cows fed. Rural people are like that as can be seen in the incredible response to the needs of the farmers and ranchers devastated by the wildfires in Texas, Colorado and Kansas.

Napoleon of the Henhouse

With a feather in his hat.

Glug, glug, glug

Somebody get a snow brush...there's a Camaro under there

As if the snow wasn't enough, we had other fun too. Jade and Liz came out into the kitchen where I was writing just in time to hear the oddest and most alarming gurgling noise you could imagine.

Oh no! Sounds like it's coming from the refrigerator. 

It's an oldie and a not-so-goody and we quickly concluded that it was dying.

Or even dead.

Just what we needed with feet of snow in the driveway, more still falling, more on the way and the potential for high winds.

We kept listening to it.

Not running.

We kept feeling it.

Not running.

We made plans to put the stuff in its freezer in the big freezer and the regular foods in the front hall where it's cold but not freezing.

I worried. Not that it is the biggest deal in the world, but there have been so many things...we just didn't need another one. We plotted and planned and puzzled for quite some time.

I was standing by it fretting about how we would deal if it really was dead, when the gurgling sound came again.

From a bucket full of bunny waterers that was sitting in front of it thawing and occasionally letting out some bubbles and giggles. 

Then the refrigerator motor started up...it was just idle because the house was pretty cold.

I may have threatened Liz with GBH when I realized that was where the sound came from.

Anybody seen a Border Collie around here?

Dogs above the Ground

Side pass

Levade

Starting the Capriole

Who's a good boy?

It Ain't Easy Being Green

Thank you, Scott and Jen, for an amazing evening.....complete with flying monkeys....plus a great score, wonderful choreography, and the best lighting I have ever seen.

Balmy Spring Breezes

Took Mack the Jack out for a walk only to see a hundred or so Canada Geese trying to put down on the river. Normally they tumble a bit to dump the speed at which they fly and then cup and land, feet outstretched like little pontoons. That is fun to watch especially when there are thousands.

Today however, they hung suspended, unable to dump the speed thus unable to land easily. There sure was some tumbling and side slipping going on out there.

Some of them gave up and headed north over the mountains....

Then I went out to put some extra seed down under the Honey Locust tree. With the cold and wind even Red-winged Blackbirds are coming to the feeders. There are dozens of hungry birds out there.

A female Downy Woodpecker startled off the suet ball feeder and was dashed to the ground at my feet. She huddled there for a moment, crest raised, practically blowing away, and then flew up into the tree.

Yow! Poor bird!

On the other hand....the zinnia seedlings are up in the living room. There are chicks in the brooder and lambs in the pen. The hens are falling all over themselves to supply eggs for hatching and eating, and the sun is slowly trending north....

Tooth and Claw

We had deadlines in the afternoon and the morning to waste spend as we wished yesterday, so we hit three river birding spots. Yankee Hill Lock was less than thrilling, several hundred Canada Geese, a scattering of Mallards, American Black Ducks, and American Crows, but nothing new or exciting.

It's been weeks since we saw anything interesting at the boat launch, but there were at least three hundred American Crows, a large crop of Ring-billed Gulls, some Herring Gulls and a few other  birds there. We did get the first Killdeer of the year there, which was wonderful, as I was very jealous of my mama who has been seeing them all week up on Lake Montgomery.

Then we hit the river by McDonald's. We immediately saw a mess of Common Mergansers, which are so pretty, and a single Hooded Merganser.

I had the camera trained on the hoodie, hoping for a semi clear shot, when, wham! a Bald Eagle splashed into the scene and swooped off with something in its talons. It landed a few feet from where it grabbed its catch and proceeded to dismember it to the accompaniment of a mess of mobbing crows.

We thought for a long time that it got the hoodie, but photos....admittedly awful, thanks to distance and bad light....seem to indicate a fish. It sat there calmly crows and all, eating for quite a while, and then flew off leaving just a few bites for the crows. Right place, right time.....weren't we lucky!

Long Lake

On the wall outside Hoss's

Marathon trip last Sunday, involving going to Hoss's in Long Lake to shop, taking a few photos of the lake itself, and then driving to Bath and back. 

Midnight was also involved, as was a little bit of Moose Questing. We saw a lot of deer, but no moose.

It was still a wonderful trip. Such fun to shop for Peggy's third birthday at such an amazing store. Alan got her a fuzzy bunny puppet, very cuddly, and I found a children's book about a Snowy Owl.

Alan also bought me a Redwall book I hadn't read before. Beck and I stumbled on Brian Jacques books via his other series about a haunted ship, which alas, was never finished due to his death.

It took me a while to get into Redwall, but now I love them, particularly the GUOSIM. 

Meanwhile the weather is nuts. Cold and windy, dark and gloomy and there are rumors of a potential blizzard for next week. Yay. March needs to get back on its meds.