Almanac

This is how it was birding this morning. This is a power wire in the cow barnyard.
Note: two Mourning Doves, one Indigo Bunting, and a very ticked off Robin
 that was trying to feed honeysuckle berries to nestlings somewhere

While the cat's away.....

The boss is off to Empire Farm Days today. I hope he is having a good time and not suffering too badly from the heat. Meanwhile, this mouse is having a fine time.

From the unusual phone call department comes one from his orthodontic surgeon, who is repairing the damage from the car accident. Early this morning the doctor's receptionist called. Visions of missed appointments flashed through my head, but no, the doctor's cows were out on the road and she was looking for someone with a horse trailer to haul them home. I truly wished I could help her, but there was not much I could do. Alas, I don't drive, and by the time he made it home from Seneca Falls the cows could have walked back to the farm...

And that's not all.....

Despite being the last full month of summer, August has plenty to show us.

Gold finches flutter all day in the rudbeckia like so many flying flowers. They are the exact same color. There are so many that it is a challenge to get a remotely accurate count when I want to do an eBird checklist. They are simply everywhere.

For every bird that has taken to the airwaves and headed south there is some other species still busily rearing young. Two sets of robin parents were still feeding nestlings this morning and a young Northern Flicker was following its parents around begging vociferously. Catbirds appear to have kids as well.

There are advantages to being a gimp for a while. It took me a very long time to walk over to the barn and up to the crossroad to the T-field this morning, but what a lot of birds I saw.... 28 species in all. (It takes me a long time to walk anywhere btw.)

Then, as I was standing dead still, listening and watching for movement right behind the barn, I heard a sharp cracking from the bushes. There is a deer trail there....maybe about four feet from where I was waiting....

Sure enough after a few seconds a doe thrust her head out of the bushes right in front of me. I stood frozen waiting to see what she would do. Had the wind been different I might have even gotten a photo, but it was almost exactly from me to her.

With a loud WOOF! and a lot more crackling, she was gone back down the hill. I think she was an old one, as her face was pretty grizzled. Deer, by the way, are not always the quiet, wily things their reputation would have you believe.

The highlight of the trip was a Black-and-White Warbler busily feeding right next to the barn gate. Although they are not terribly rare, the last one I saw was on our blacksmith's garage roof before Magnum was born. Anyone who knew him can figure about how long ago that was. (Hint...I was still thin and blonde, and he's been gone over a decade...oh, and he lived to be 32.)

It was an amazingly crisply-marked and tidy little bird, and obligingly gave both its song and chip call so I could have a good listen.

I have really missed walking out and although this was a short, and really, really slow walk, it was a lot of fun.

Flicker family

To the Swamp

Gulls and Caspian Terns

Pied-billed Grebe (Photo by Alan)

Many of the pools were lined with goose down. Pillow fight anyone?

We did a quick run up to Montezuma National Wildlife refuge yesterday and drove around the main loop. No time for the side pools, but we had a great time.

Saw a good number of Caspian Terns...normally only one or two, some ducks, many Pied Billed Grebes, a few American Coots, and a nice flock of Black Terns, which I particularly enjoy.

Yesterday's Dark-eyed Junco was unusual enough to warrant a query from eBird, which I thought was very cool. I discussed it with the data reviewer, he was quickly convinced and is interested in the White-eyed Vireo Alan is pretty sure he is seeing regularly. 

Big Day

Today is Global Big Day 2016. What with all the birdie bounty we enjoy here I thought I might play along. Yesterday evening Alan and I took a wonderful walk out scouting, and finally picked up an Eastern Towhee for the yearlong farm count.

The sheer numbers of birds we saw was astonishing. 

Since the boss and I took our walk  a couple of days ago, the Bobolink and Red-winged Blackbird populations have skyrocketed. Hundreds of Bobolinks. Lots of Common Yellowthroats, Yellow Warblers, and other birds of interest as well.

Here's how the Big Day count went. (Had the day's 10,000 steps done by noon.)

She just showed up today and she looks terrible.

 5 AM first bird American Robin

7:30 AM-24 species and  I haven't even actually started birding and haven't left the house and driveway behind the house....just been out airing the dogs and hanging up the laundry.

Such drama! I went out to discourage a chipmunk and discovered both red and grey squirrels marauding around the place. A red was trying to get nestlings from a Common Grackle nest in the old blue spruce. Up and down the trunk it raced, big black birds in hot pursuit. I scared it away, but I am sure it returned as soon as I went back in the house. It's pretty much welcome to the darned grackles, but we have dozens of other birds nesting in the yard....... I don't know what's up with the arboreal rodents this year, but there are too darned many of them.

Anyhow, we are off to the fields again soon.

Later.....Alan took antifreeze and water way up in back to the skid steer where it overheated yesterday. The boss fixed the rest of the heifer pasture fence while Becky and I walked for birds. We crawled under the fence to the south and met Alan in Seven-county Hill Field to sight in some rifles. 

He started teaching Becky to shoot and within minutes I could hear her pinging the targets....I was over in another field birding.

A good place for the shooting range

1:50 PM-40 species and still counting.Picked up a couple first of year birds for the farm count too, Ring-Necked Pheasant and Barn Swallow. Keeping on keeping on...

3:00 PM...roughly....a life bird shows up right in the cottonwood across the driveway. A Cerulean Warbler. What a beautiful little bird! What a perfect day to show up!

Looks like we are only going to hit the low 40s for numbers this year, which isn't all that shabby. However, once upon a summer haying day, many long years ago when Grandma Peggy was still with us, I spotted 52 species in one day. I don't suppose I will ever top that.


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Montezuma

Purple Martins

I was expecting a less than stellar weekend. Alan was supposed to have to work straight through and be in DC for the next couple of weeks with no breaks. Then last night he called, late, but on his way home. I figured he would be too tired to do much, but he was up bright and early and said, "Let's go to Montezuma."

And so we did. 

Blue-winged Teal

Best day birding ever. We saw so many thousand birds it was insane. 

At least seven. Or maybe eight. Or maybe more, Bald Eagles, hunting right under the observation tower where we were standing. They were so impressive and amazing and all, that I cut my hand on the tower railing, said ouch, and never stopped watching. Climbed down and discovered that I was bleeding all over the place....just made sure I didn't drip all over my stuff and went right on birding. Alan had to chase me down with a Band-aid.

Rusty Blackbird yea or nay?
 *Update:verified! First I've seen in decades. Identified them by learning their song and listening for them in groups of more common blackbirds

I am pretty sure I spotted Rusty Blackbirds. I have photos, and just need to get them checked out by wiser birders.

Osprey

Talked to a fellow on one of the observation platforms that informed us about a lot of what he could see or had seen with his better than ours equipment. That is one thing I have missed...other birders to talk to like that. I am mostly self-taught (and thus personally to blame for all my bad IDs), and meeting someone like that was pretty cool.

What a day! What a place!

Saw Ruddy Ducks, the most improbable chestnut color, bobbing up from dives like so many bathtub toys. Cutest things ever. As always we are going to need help with one gull and some sandpipers. They are so HARD!

A tentative list of what we spotted and ID'd

Canada Goose
Caspian Tern
Arctic Tern (according to the bird man...all I could tell is that they were medium-sized terns)
Greater Yellowlegs
Solitary Sandpiper
Killdeer

Great Blue Heron
Lesser Scaup
American Wigeon

Northern Shoveler

Northern Shoveler
Green-winged Teal
Blue-winged Teal
Northern Pintail
Ruddy Duck
American Coot
Mallard
Wood Duck
Hooded Merrganser
Common Merganser
Bald Eagle
Red-tailed Hawk
Osprey (Flying, as well as feeding chicks on a nest)
Turkey Vulture
Northern Harrier
Kestrel
American Robin
European Starling
Common Grackle
Rock Pigeon
Northern Mockingbird
Song Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Red-winged Blackbird
Rusty Blackbird (?)
Belted Kingfisher
Northern Rough-Winged Swallow
Tree Swallow (thousands)
Barn Swallow
Purple Martin
American Crow
Some small sandpipers yet to be identified. Update: Dunlin, and I figured it out all by myself and then had it verified. Go me. lol
And probably more that I missed getting on the list because there was so much to see. 
What a day!

A Bald Eagle had just passed putting up hundreds and hundreds of ducks
You can see a few of them here

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.

Four and Twenty

A huge flock of starlings is visiting our woods and the neighbor's woods every couple of days.
I would hesitate to estimate how many, although I keep trying to come up with a rough number. What you see here might be a quarter of them. They are very loud and busy

Opening Day South

Be careful out there! There are a lot more people in the woods and fields than on a normal fall morning. Some of them are not exactly woodsmen, but hopefully no one will squeeze the trigger until there is an actual deer in their sights.

Beautiful day for it though. Cold, frosty, with a peach and gold and green and blue sunrise just now flowing over the horizon like cool, bright water in an exotic fruit drink. Mango anyone?

Birds aren't up yet, so I don't know first bird for the day...oops, there it is, a Chickadee peeping on the feeder......but a Bald Eagle visited right behind the house yesterday.

And of course when I was creeping up the lawn trying to get some good shots, some power company tree trimmers walked right up behind me to ask it they could cut some box elders....I am always glad when they are polite enough to ask before hacking down trees. Plus delighted to tell them that they could cut as many box elders as they wanted to. What are the odds though?

Their timing stank to say the least.

There were Crows earlier. Lots of Crows. Red-tailed hawks, what I thought was a Harrier, (no pics of the latter) plus the normal cast of characters at the feeders, which they now empty in a day or less.

It's supposed to snow tomorrow night. Guess everything is on the move.

And, as always on this special holiday for Upstate NY deer hunters, the Youpers.... Second Week of Deer Camp



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Portents

The mystery sparrow

Spent a lot of time outdoors yesterday. It was just too nice not to. 

Dark-eyed Junco

The sun dogs flickered on and off, not too strong, not so bright, so maybe they didn't have much to say about the future.

Pine Siskin

But the Pine Siskins on the feeder? The flock of a dozen of them mixed with winter sparrows and house finches? 

Now that may have meaning, although I surely hope not.

And then there were the oddly marked Woolly Bears. One had a little black on its butt, a reasonable amount of it on the front, and the widest orange band we had ever seen. What's up with that?

House Finch

Went out to watch that rocket launch last night, only to find after I stood outside for a good long while, watching a distant plane, that it had been scrubbed.

Of course it was. The sky was clear here for a change for a nighttime sky event. Normally, all eclipses, comets, meteor showers and launches that are visible on the East Coast are obscured by clouds.....and here is our Tuesday night forecast: 

Cloudy this evening with showers after midnight. Low 56F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.

Oh, well, we should be used to it by now. 

If the little sparrow I caught, sitting in the Mt. Ash tree is a Swamp Sparrow, which I believe it is, I picked up two year birds for the farm count in one day. Also got news that our Christmas Bird Count, unless something changes, will be after Christmas rather than before. If you have ever tried to cover a territory that takes in malls and shopping centers the weekend before the holiday, while driving slowly scanning for birds, you will understand why this was great news.

Is this a portent of a good winter's birding? One can only hope.

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.