Rainbow Dash

Book Huntin'

Dr. Peggy holding surgery with her dogs, cats, and horses...
and unicorns, and tigers....and other creatures great and small

Peggy has finally decided that it is okay to sit on my lap in the evening. Sometimes she watches a movie on her Kindle while I read on my NOOK. Sometimes we talk. Sometimes stuffed animals act out this and that, and sometimes we just enjoy each other's company.

I would like to add reading to her to this mix, but I don't want it to be the same old-same old. Her mama reads to her a lot in the evening, and she has plenty of books to love.

However, I would like to share the books that delighted me when I was young, some of which are especially timeless and pertinent to us animal loving folks who like to learn.

Thus I renewed a search that has been ongoing for me for several years now. My late grandmother worked in a news shop, which sold magazines as well as books. Christmas was about guaranteed to supply wonderful reading material, from comics to hard covers.

I remember one, a great, big, shiny, hardcover, that had stores and poems about animals. I know I wore it out. I still remember some of the poems.

However until today I have been unable to find it, even by searching for the text of the poems. 

Suddenly, while looking at hundreds of covers from the fifties and sixties I remembered the title!

Dogs, Cats, and Horses....... It's a bit pricey for a used kid's book, but still.....

This will always be Your Bird

It's been a year and almost a week... I've been through the stages I guess. Reminders sometimes make me smile, and a good thing too, as there are many of them.

 This time of year seems to be the hardest though. Picking away at the accounts for the taxes, the one time of year when we got to talk face-to-face for a couple of days instead of fast on the phone....unless we dropped something off at your house when the garden was making extra or something like that.

Sitting in the office in the same chair you used when you visited, I puzzle over an entry...what account, what account....and I remember labeling such data in a weird fashion, knowing that when you sat at this same desk, teasing the useful numbers out of my tangled tales of income and expenses, you would ask, "What's this?"

And, memory jogged, I would explain, and you would fix it as it needed to be.

Now, I still puzzle and just hope our accountant catches it.

Auto-fill in the bookkeeping program you set up for me. When I pay the power bills it offers your name as the first suggestion, from back in the day when I still paid you in money rather than in soup and homemade bread and before the days when we were both paid in time spent together...talking....waiting for the best birds to come out to celebrate your visits....just being friends. We were, weren't we? Great friends, the kind they talk about who can be separate for weeks, months, years, and then take up as if we just had coffee yesterday.

You know how the kids say BFF, best friends for ever? Yeah, that still holds.

It's a Cat Eat Duck World

Last summer, the boss and I watched a yellow tom cat nearly murder a much smaller black cat that was hiding among the rip rap at Schoharie Crossing. It was quite a fight.

We never saw either cat again and thought little of it.

Fast forward to now. We have been going to the museum side of the Schoharie to count the American Black Ducks there. Yesterday there were sixty!

Today there were not quite as many, but there was a deadly predator on the ice stalking them.

Critter A) the big yellow Tom, or the big yellow Don, as the case may be
Critter B) your guess is as good as mine. Click to see if you know..

That blasted yellow cat! He was right at the edge of the ice just a few feet from the nearest duck, which would soon have been within his reach. Behind him on the ice was something, which may have been a chupacabra or some other killer...or maybe just last summer's little black cat.

Anyhow, the ducks all flew when I walked down to see what it was. I was okay with that. Maybe I saved one from this cat, which I will henceforth call Donald.I mean seriously, a cat, hunting ducks almost as big as he is? Mind boggling.

If looks could kill I would be at the bottom of the Schoharie

The Big Reveal

Or....didn't we feel silly! The "owl" we saw in a hay field we were passing the other day was an errant cat....as you can see from the edited photo.

Now every time we pass a cat I say to the boss, "Look, an owl!"

Rare Whiskered Owl

Click for a closer view

Found in the Town of Glen. We actually stopped to photograph this guy before realizing......

Did She or Didn't She?

When this photo was taken one July day three years ago, I think she did. Today, well, it is pretty darned sunny out, so six more weeks of winter.

But wait! In Upstate NY, on the second day of the second month, there are ALWAYS six more weeks of winter for our eager anticipation. 

Always.

Meanwhile, check this out. Turns out the things below may be more accurate than the rodent.

Milestones

It would be great if you could wish dear Rebecca happy birthday today. She is a very special person, as her co-workers, customers, friends and family well know.

And she makes the best darned coffee you can get anywhere in town....heck in both towns....I am having a cup of not-so-superior stuff this morning because she is off work for her birthday, and I miss the good kind.

Happy Birthday, kiddo! We love you!

Good Birds

Ring-necked Pheasant...calling him my nemesis bird
the past couple of years, as we just couldn't find one
until today

Rough-legged Hawk

Northern Harrier...the Grey Ghost

Pileated Woodpecker, a pair, right in the yard today

Been lucky the past couple of days, although we missed the Snowy Owls and the Short-eared Owl we've been chasing.

A Glaucous Gull, right down on the river today
a lifer for me

Great Black-backed Gull, not rare, but he posed nicely

Sneaky

January, the hard, white heart of winter, kinda like a jawbreaker that just won't melt....And yet....a different season is sneaking in unannounced and mostly unheralded. 

Or at least pretty much. 

A friend has shared photos of maple sap flowing, but he is a kidder, so it is hard to know.

However, down at the boat launch yesterday, we saw a big sapcicle, hanging in a maple tree so...guess it is true

And the Carolina Wrens are singing their hearts out after being quiet all winter.

Still, whether the trees or the southern transplant birds believe it or not, there is a lot of winter yet to come.

Alas.

But we did find a fork in the road

Oxygen

Blue Ice

The wind hoots like a Great Horned Owl, hoooo......hooooo....hoooooooo.....howling through the Honey Locust tree just before the break of day. It's cold out here, the ice like glass between the places where the boss has sanded. I am grateful for that I can tell you. Wouldn't be walking without it...and driving down the driveway....oh, my, such peril, without the benefit of grit and rock salt.

Not much fun in darkness with dogs...hurry up boys, fingers getting brittle here...

The Mulberry trees that feed the Mulberry Express in summer must feel the same way, as they rattle and clack in the heavy draft a'blowing. 

One of them is creaking ominously. Finn, let's take care of this business somewhere else, eh?

Still dead dark at 6 AM, not even a glow in the East, the dregs of Orion fading in the West. He can fade into spring anytime he wants to!

A domestic Greylag goose that used to hang out with the Canada Geese
Down by the river. I miss her!

Birding's been barren lately, of anything of much interest. A Hairy Woodpecker on the suet feeder, for a FOY, that's first of year, and a strange little goose down on the river, and that's about it, except for Bald Eagles and Red-tailed Hawks. We see plenty of them.

The goose was DD, diagnosed domestic, by the experts. I knew the head wasn't right for a Snow Goose, but what an odd little bird to find with the Mallards on the ice down there. Funny how you find a few domestic geese and hybrids hanging out with the wild ones. I've seen two of the domestic Greylag sort, and now this one, said to be a Swan Goose.

Anyhow, props to Becky for finding a cold medicine that works. We have tried about everything and even some home remedies, (and a hearty thank you to those who sent the recipe!) which helped for a while, but didn't last long enough.

This stuff....oh, my, I had just about forgotten how it felt to breathe. Oxygen, it is terribly underrated these days! I like it!

A picture Becky took of me when I wasn't looking
Or at least not in her direction

Good Morning to You

But wasn't the Schoharie pretty the other evening when we went down?

So this morning we awaken to tsunami warnings for the left coast where two of my favorite guys are....centered near Anchorage, where a good blog friend lives, and flood watches and warnings for our local area, with one of our girls spending her work day a few yards from the river.

And squirrels on the bird feeders.

Dagnabbit. 

Actually, I haven't even put the feeders out yet, as it is still pretty dark and it's pouring, but there was just a squirrel looking in the kitchen window at me.

***Update, tsunami warning cancelled. And it's not raining anywhere near as hard as it was. 

We were in a traffic jam the other day......

Interesting....

Yesterday was interesting...

I am sure your remember that old curse, "May you live in interesting times...."

Yeah, that kind of interesting. First our boy and my brother were flying from Florida to Washington State for work. All the while I was thinking that they were probably almost to their destination, they were instead sitting in an airport in Dallas most of the day...who knows why.

As a mother it is my job to worry and I am dedicated to motherhood. Thus I wasn't really restful all day long...and most of the night before, truth be told.

Then the rest of the crew took Miss Peggy to the state museum. A good time was had by all. However, on the way home their truck coughed up some kind of bearing that bears on the serpentine belt...or so I understand...right by Albany Airport.

They spent a good many hours alongside the road, calling folks to ferry parts and jury rigging a solution to the problem of getting home. Thus, although the guys were safe on the ground in Washington, I was still in full worried mother mode until quite late in the evening.

Props to the nice police officers who checked to make sure the kids were okay and that Peggy was warm enough in the truck and all. They offered kindly to let her and the girls sit in their car to get warm, or to arrange transportation to a warm place if needed. They even checked back later with two cars in case help was needed, and lighted up the scene for a bit so the guys could see.

However, the kids and Peg were chilly but okay, and she loved watching the planes land and take off. 

Kudos also to the guy who got the parts and took them to Jade and helped him install them. We would have gone down ourselves if we had to but heavy traffic and night time driving made us hope we wouldn't have to. We were grateful that Jade managed to get things going without us.

All's well that ends well, but I gotta tell you, it sure was an interesting day.

Guess Who's going to the State Museum

She believes in being prepared.....This trip is a pretty big deal.

She will see beams from the World Trade Center, some of which her daddy, who drives truck, hauled here from there. 

She will get to meet the Cohoes Mastodon. I still remember the first time I saw it, when I was, I think, in 5th grade. It made quite an impression, and I am sure today will for Peggy too.

And the Native displays. My first visit there was unforgettable as well and I am sure Peggy will be talking about them for weeks. 

There are minerals that her great grandpa found in the mineral section.

After all the educational stuff, there is lots of fun as well.

I hope they all have a great time!

Good Luck

We tried again for the Snowy Owl, and this time it was there...the boss's idea to look again and I thank him.

Bird was utterly unconcerned about cars and sat still for photos, barely looking at us at all. I didn't open the door or get out or anything....

A New Grandpuppy.....Cam

In the Technicolor Twilight

We went out late yesterday afternoon in pursuit of whatever might be around, from Snow Buntings to new ducks for the year.

While traversing snowy winter back roads we received a call about that Snowy Owl we got to see late last year.

We headed off, but didn't find it, alas.

However, we saw scenes that defy description. Not these in the photos...these were earlier.

No, up around Fort Plain, where the hills are high and the hedgerows sparse, there are miles and miles of open snow-covered cropland. The horizon ranged from brilliant pink and blue and orange to magenta as red as the blood of the sun. It was beyond my expertise to get any photos of it......but it was stunning and wonderful.

Maybe we will see the owl this year. Maybe we won't.

But, oh, what skies this cold shoulder of a January has to offer.

Open Water

Just before breakup

I love that the river is open again. It is still too high and too fast for the shallows in front of McDonald's to be active, but the other places....down by the boat launch, the compost place, the river by the state barn.... are all getting busier every day.

Yesterday, in far from friendly weather, we found a single Ring-necked Duck, a Common Goldeneye diving among a mess of Mallards, and a Common Loon. It was pretty exciting, and as an added benefit, the Goldeneye fairly glowed in bright, white and black breeding plumage. What a gorgeous bird!

It is not such a great time of year for cold-blooded outdoor lovers, but it sure is fun going out treasure hunting like we do.

Now if this cold/flu/grippe/disease/plague would just go away. Peggy and Jade seem to be over it...the rest of us, not so much.