Birds

With the world locked in ice, and covered by about a foot of snow so powdery and fluffy that it looks and feels fake (not to mention slippery) there is little to be seen outdoors. Nothing but unrelieved white, punctuated only by the grey of the trees and an occasional flash of vague color from a salt encrusted car down on the Thruway. This season is when the birds really come into their own as points of interest. (Of course we watch them all year, but now they are the only show in town.)

Day before yesterday I trudged through the drifts up to the orchard to get some dried apple wood to boost the lame, wet-wood fire that was supposed to be warming us. (HAH) Over the river a large raptor soared, spot-lighted by the brilliant sun just showing over the southern horizon (she ain't so very high in the sky these days.) It flashed past, simply glowing, white-black, white-black as its wings slowly pumped the wind. It was probably nothing more than the hungry red tail that hangs around all year, but it looked like an ancient dragon patrolling up the small breadth of still-open water.

Yesterday I went out on one of my perpetual motion trips to the stove just int time to just miss seeing the Cooper's hawk, just missing a pigeon. She huffed and puffed on the barn ridgepole snapping her elegant wings open and shut in irritation when it scooted under the eaves and into the barn (I have seen her duck in through the open window after one now and then, but she didn't yesterday). She is so respected by the neighborhood flying rats, that not one pigeon landed on the heifer barn roof for the rest of the day (they sat on the house instead, darn 'em.)

Same day, feeding the birds. When I walked toward the swing set where the feeders hang I didn't see a one. However a veritable cloud of juncos, gold finches, chickadees, white-throated sparrows, Sassenachs, mourning doves, blue jays, tufted titmice, and who knows what all else, flew out of the old Christmas tree. Alan put it up so some of the feeders hang among the branches. The birds seem to love the shelter, and I am kind of fond of it too. I can just lean back here at the computer, twitch open the edge of the curtain, and peer right into the center of it. (Voyeurism of the best sort.)

On the not so happy with the birds front, crows and mallard ducks are marauding the ag bags to pick out corn. I am perfectly happy to provide fifty odd pounds of black oil sunflower seeds over the course of the winter. It keeps the birds happy with me and I with them.

Hundreds of tons of corn from our winter cattle feed being ruined is another story. Ducks can spread salmonella to cows when they leave droppings in feed. We chase them away whenever we see them. I don't feel too sorry for them either. They have a whole darned river to forage in, plus plenty of corn left on the ground in more open places where the wind has blown the snow away. I used to take Mike up to herd them out of the bags, (which was a lot of fun and pretty near as effective as the Cooper's on the pigeons). The first day I tried it, it was stormy and when we got to the bag fifty or sixty turkeys, maybe two hundred mallards, and crows and starlings too numerous to count flew up in a tornado of black and brown in front of us. My intrepid dog, who thought nothing of grabbing a bull by the nose and hanging off until the bovine reprobate changed his mind about where he was going, was terrified by the uproar from the birds and almost quit me for the house!

*** I ain't not supportin' nobody yet, but have you noticed the photos on the front page of all the papers of the winners of the Iowa caucuses? Gigantic color shots of Obama...itty bitty snaps of Huckabee, or nothing at all. Hmmm, any favoritism on the part of the media? Nah, couldn't be, they are merely unbiased reporters of history in the making.