Solitary

Looks like I will be birding alone for the next few weeks, as my partner and teammate in the game will be stationed in a city far to the south of us. You know the one....full of folks who are full of hot air and bombast and keep the rest of us down on the farm as best they can.

I will not let it slow me down.....much...no matter how much I miss him. It is nearly May. Things are happening. Our acres don't feature the exotic wonders of some of the places we go on weekends...no Sandhill Cranes here.....but if you get up early enough you can watch the moon setting in the west while the sun rises behind the neighbor's woods to the east.I had been planning to get to the top of the Heifer Pasture hill before sunrise some day soon.

Today was the day. You see at o'dark thirty, sometime well before five, I was dreaming weirdly of being in an Amish home with my little helldog. Deeply, soundly, asleep. Suddenly, abruptly,  I was awakened by the sound of trotting horse's hooves and whinnying. I hustled downstairs thinking Sunny was out....and found Liz getting Jade off to work and Peggy thunder-rolling-in-the-mountains through the house, giggling and sounding a lot like a pony. It seemed like an omen.....

So I got dressed and got out there, just in time to hear a solitary Brown Thrasher FOY singing his paired almost-but-not-quite mockingbird song from the top of a nearby tree...He wasn't there yesterday.....if you play the video you can hear him and a turkey clucking in the background.

..

Stink Eye

After our boy left for the Keystone State on Sunday, the boss took me birding. He likes to drive around the countryside and I like to stare at bodies of water looking for fowl, so a good time was had by all.

We tried the pond on Goldman Road, but there was nothing to see other than a couple of setting geese on muskrat houses and a muskrat hustling across the road where the beaver excluder excluded him too.

There IS a Great Blue Heron in this photo

We saw some harriers along the way, a few kestrels, but nothing very interesting until we hit Bowmaker Pond. The place was fairly boiling there. A single swallow, looked like a Northern Rough Winged, lots of Canada Geese, at least 22 Common Mergansers squabbling up a storm, a single Great Blue Heron, and a pair of Wood Ducks that whistled in and settled obligingly against the cattails.

It was fun. I spent a lot of time wandering around the little meadow near the water peering at this and that and taking pictures. Suddenly I felt someone watching....

And there, just a few yards from my feet, was a goose, giving me the stink eye and just daring me to come closer.

I didn't. 

But you can count on geese.....

One

Two

Three.......see what I mean?

The Plus Side

I tell people that I leave the window over the kitchen sink dirty to prevent window strikes.
That is, at least in part, a lie.
I just don't do windows.

There are at least sixty goldfinches on the two tray feeders that Linda sent me or on the ground or little honey locusts around them. I know because I counted, one bird, two bird, three bird, four..... There are no doubt a good many more than that as well, as you surely can't see all of them from the windows.

They are very spooky, whether because of the wind or an accipiter being around I don't know, but they swirl like yellow snowflakes every few minutes. I put extra seed out this morning because of the weather, but it looks as if I will be doing a refill pretty soon.

We had a flock of three-hundred or so up in the old cow pasture all through the cold season. I wonder if this is part of that flock, driven to the feeders on the breath of winter that is wafting away our little bit of spring.

There are also Common Grackles, Downy Woodpeckers, Song Sparrows, White-throated Sparrows, Dark-eyed Juncos, a smattering of House Sparrows, Mourning Doves, and our good buddy, the Red-bellied Woodpecker, who never fails to amuse with his startled expression when he peers in through the kitchen window at me.

They all seem desperately hungry and very nervous.

Wait for It

Hmmm, what looks good today?

Ants?

Keep an eye on the sky

Aren't I fancy?

WHAM! Catbird photo bomb.
Right in the back of the head.

Schooled

Clinging to the screen. I think if I had opened the door they would have come right inside

Right offa my own porch! The little wrens fledged yesterday. I missed the show, as they were pretty quiet about it, but at almost dusk, when I was sitting in my Sunday chair, eating stir fry cooked by Liz, they brought the party right to me.

My chair is right opposite the door to the sitting porch. The babies came right to the door and clung to the screen. We are quite accustomed to tame hummingbirds visiting the doors and windows, but this was amazing. I think there are three babies, but it seemed as if they were everywhere, beeping and cheeping and fluttering.

Just about dusk last night

And the anxious parents, which have totally ignored us through the whole saga of nest building, incubating, and brooding, inches from our heads on the back porch, went nuts!

What an uproar. Screeching and screaming and carrying on!

This morning, thinking that they were probably gone, I dared to step out on that little sanctuary in hopes of conducting my normal new species scan and taking some shots of the sunrise.

OMG! Wrens scattering in every direction. I sat down for a minute in my little red chair, but the parents came right to me and scolded me loud and roundly.  Pretty funny to see one peeking up over the edge of Grandma Peggy's little yellow fernery, inches away from my face, and cussing like a sailor.

'All right, all right, it's too darned cold to sit out here anyhow.'

I came back into the warmth and left them alone....as the babies seemed to be coming right back after fluttering down across the driveway for a minute. Between the freezing temps...we brought all the geraniums back inside last night...and the birds...I wonder if I am ever going to get to enjoy that porch this spring.

Maybe I should call this the tale of two porches.

Waiting for me to leave so they could come back on the porch this morning

Sunday Stills....One Subject

Ruby-throated hummingbird drying off in the early morning sun

Ed's challenge for this week was to choose the one subject we would photograph if it was the only one we could use for the rest of our lives.

Carolina wren with a beak full of bugs, feeding the babies on the back porch

As you would probably guess, although i love taking pictures of our little one and farm animals and trees and frogs and all, the birds are first on the list of what I like to picture.

These are from Saturday morning.

For more Sunday Stills.....

Punching the Insect Time Clock

Within minutes after I opened the door for the first time at five AM, heading out to walk little Miss Daisy, the wrens were actively feeding the kids. I've been timing them since then, off and on, as I polish up the Farm Side for this week.

Speaking of which....I like writing, but I hate the final proofreading for commas, tenses, common sense, and the like. Ack. I try to let it stew over night and look at it with fresh eyes, but I get so picky and drive myself nuts.

Anyhow, not more than four minutes has passed between any two bug deliveries. Since they were still feeding at around nine or so last night, how many insects do these little birds extract from the environment? If I peep out the screen door I see a steady stream of caterpillars, things with wings, and unidentifiable bundles of bugginess. 

What hard workers! Everyone should have a couple of pairs!

For the Birds

Thanks, Linda, the goldfinches love it!

What does it mean if the robin sees his shadow?

Eastern Phoebe

For Heaven's sake, hide buddy! Season is open!

Gold finches and white-crowned sparrows

If you look closely you can see the Carolina wren feeding the babies under the hard hat.
This was taken through the screen door from the kitchen.

Three new birds for the Northview count yesterday...Northern Harrier, right in the old horse pasture outside the big windows, Willow Catcher right where they always are in the rosebushes at the edge of the long lawn, and a Wood Thrush down in the overgrown front field. The kids can be serenaded to sleep each night by his beautiful song. Maybe Peggy will grow up to be a birder!

So far we are over fifty species for the year and I haven't even been up in the fields much yet. What a year for birds! First time I have ever seen a Harrier down here. Wrens should fledge in about four days. I wonder if I can park the car close to the porch and use it for a blind...they are pretty tame. 

Oh, the Migrants You Will See

American gold finch

And hear. The boss and I went out a'fencing yesterday and there were birds everywhere. There was a whole darned flock of what I think were probably bobolinks, but I took the little binoculars instead of the big binoculars so that I could carry a corn knife to cut brush.

White-throated sparrow

I never used the corn knife at all, and the little ones didn't have enough oomph to let me identify the noisy chatters. We got up close with a vociferous brown thrasher though. What a delightful fellow, so loud and bold. First of the year.

And then down near the buildings the barn swallows showed up. Grey catbird this morning. I think that sweet sweet sweeter singer I've been hearing is the yellow warbler, although I am waiting to actually see him to be sure.

Song sparrow

Chipping sparrow

Truly this is the best time of year for a birder and I treasure every day.

I Love To See the Little Birdies

Especially around the house and barns and buildings.

THIS however, is ridiculous!

This is only part of the flock of turkey vultures that were perching on the barn roof and in the dead elm tree this morning when I went out.

Shoo! Shoo! Just get the heck out of here!!

Timberdoodle or Conserving the Grasslands

A few smudges of low-lying cloud, curled and shuffled by daybreak breezes.

Almost-silhouette of a bold-singing robin, so dark yet, too dark for color or light. Still, I can find him by the denser darkness where he perches, not twenty feet from my head.

Off to the south in the old horse pasture, a soft, nasal peent! resonates gently.

It is so noisy here that it isn't easy to hear, but he's out there.......the timberdoodle.

Also known as the American woodcock, one of our favorite birds of early spring.

I think he actually returned the day before yesterday. Thought I might have heard a whisper of sky dance wings just before dawn. 

Yesterday I was sure. He whirled and whistled right above my head as I walked the other doodle, Daisy the Doodlebop dog, as Alan calls her.

Sheer delight. There is nothing else to name it. Like the deepest mystery of the wild woods come calling at our doorstep.He is so welcome to his little corner of our pasture and the tiny, icy pond.

 I have a friend who writes often, of the grassland farming of Upstate NY and what it has to offer birds and wildlife. Not too many yards...certainly not enough...from our eastern boundary looms a housing development, row upon row of matching houses on tiny lawns carved out of field and forest that was also once a farm.

Mention has been made over the years that Northview Farm would fit right in with the developer's plans, room for hundreds and hundreds more little boxes of humanity.

Imagine, should we be unable to hang on to this ground, or should the kids have to sell it when we are under it, what that would mean for the birds and animals that share it with us. 

As I sit here this morning, typing at my kitchen table, I hear robins, white-throated sparrows, chickadees, the woodcock, the Carolina wren and others that have slipped my mind. By the time the sun comes up many other species will join the list. 

Just here at the house, we have five kinds of woodpeckers, nuthatches, finches, a lingering list of the northern sparrows, and literally dozens of others. 

Well over sixty species are counted here on the farm each year. 

Just yesterday I saw something BIG! and white! And flapping across my view from the living room windows. Alas I didn't have my glasses on, but it was either a swan or some kind of heron. Did I mention it was big!

There are more kinds of birds out on the fields proper and a number of species I don't recognize yet, by call or flickering outline, flashing through the leaves. I am sure with more expert ears and eyes than mine the count would hit at least seventy...some breeding, some just passing through or stopping to grab a snack.

The decline of upland birds in America is marked and documented and drastic. A wildlife biologist sat at this very table a few years ago and linked the dramatic decline of the whippoorwill to the decline of small farms. And when is the last time you heard one?

As farms fail, bobolinks, night hawks, and many other once-common species continue to dry up and vanish. I worry.....The number of viable small farms that have given up and gone out has left an alarming panorama of vulnerable acreage just begging for development. Mile upon mile of it. Should the economy by some amazing sleight of hand, somehow recover....how fast will the houses follow?

Top twenty common declining birds...some of these used to be common here. Some of them still are.

Whippoorwill research, author of which told me about a lot of this.

Lookin' Out my Back Door

For those of you old enough to remember the song...we used to play it back in the band days. I do not smoke whatever engendered those lyrics, so we make do with the birds and wild things here in NY. It was always a happy, foot stomping good song, just the same. We played a lot of CCR...the boys were all good musicians, but three major chords suited me just fine.

Now the view out the back door is far different than in the music days.

A soft rain is falling. Warm, gentle, damp, and soggy. I keep listening for the woodcock, but no peent rings from the horse pasture yet. If you see him, tell him he's way late.

I was hoping to see a duck or two for my annual all-farm bird species count. When I was walking the delicate Miss Daisy, didn't a pair of mallards quack noisily right over my head. Nice of them. I see teal every darned day, but I'm not good enough on ducks to know which ones at the distance. Fast flying little bullets that they are.

And the turkeys are strutting out on the hill. Too dark and rainy for much of a photo, but you get the idea. Lots of ladies in the rose bushes, two big Toms flashing their wares, and a little jake puffing his tail when he thinks he can get away with it.

Spring truly has arrived and not a minute too soon.

Day of the Woodpecker

I took the camera out after a robin......

 But other creatures came 

And eventually, a robin