Inevitable

Spring that is. From the hill near the house, up in the old Horse Pasture, you can look down over the valley and see the river, bank full, and nearly bursting.

Flood reports from all over yesterday. Snow today, although not too much. Cold and bitey-windy though. A chilly 18 degrees with with the breeze so brisk it is blowing the birds around.  I won't be taking an impromptu stroll over the hills this morning....

Out in the back of the same pasture, the tiny pond is brimming too. It only very rarely has this much water in it, although it almost always has at least a little, except in the most grievous of droughts.

Believe it or not, this tiny pothole in the slate out there has seen Mallard Ducks on many occasions, and once, just once, a pair of Northern Pintails. They flew up out as I was walking back there.....simply stunning me. Alas it was before I started the annual farm bird count and before the wonderful camera I take everywhere I go, so they are not recorded anywhere except in distant memories.

It is still February, and today it looks and feels like it. However, there are bits of green, short songs of blackbirds and other early arrivals, and a sweet warmth when the sun manages to overpower the wind for a minute.

And every day I listen for the peent of the American Woodcock....and soon....peepers.....yay!

Update

The nuts have it....American Groundnut that is. A consensus of wonderful folks, here and on Facebook, agree that our little mystery flower from the previous post is thus identified. What a fascinating plant!

They grow all along some of the walkways at Montezuma, out on periphery where there are walking trails along some of the smaller bodies of water. I have tried for quite a while to identify them, but with no starting place except that they are obviously legumes, it took a while.




I should have just posted them here first. You folks never let me down.

They'll do it every Time

Plant expert friends. What is this stuff? Thanks

We had a big family excursion planned, what with Alan laid off for a week and all. We figured everybody who could get time off would travel up to the Farm Show in Syracuse and have a high time.

Then Alan got called back to work for today. Farm Show starts tomorrow.

They'll do it every time.

And the boss in his infinite elderlyness has taken to sleeping a recliner for the past couple of years. It works out well for all concerned. His knees and shoulders don't kill him in the morning and I enjoy the phenomenon of not sleeping next to a running chainsaw (just ask Alan what sharing a motel room was like on the Talladega trip.)

Alas, his recliner, which his dad purchased at least 40 years ago, slowly gave up the ghost. We kept telling him, "You have to get a new chair. You need a new chair. Go buy a new chair."

Stubborn is as stubborn does though. He resisted for weeks, nay months. Right up until the other night he fell out of the silly thing. Seriously, there was nothing left of it.

So, he finally went yesterday and bought one. I tried it out and it is the most comfortable thing you could imagine, nice and squashy, yet firm enough, and catches you in all the right places. Looks good too. He looks so much more comfortable in an actual chair, rather than a thing that had deteriorated until it looked more like a raft for Robinson Crusoe than a chair.

However, despite having slept well, and looking pretty refreshed and all this morning, when I asked him how he liked it he said, "I miss my old chair......"

They'll do it every time. 

When you just Love the Barn

WTF

I don't think these are the same birds that hang around down by the house.
Many of them show clear signs of molting into summer colors. (not this one)

Where's the flock? The boys walked the farm yesterday and gave me a call from the T-field. There was a mixed feeding flock up there and they thought I should give it a look.

The river is ice-jammed here and open to the east

I hiked up....the T-field is on the western edge of the farm, not usually where I walk because the cow pasture used to straddle the road up there. No cows, no barbed wire gates to open now, but still....in my mind it is a harder walk than up to the other hill. It really isn't though.

Anyhow, there certainly were birds up there. Hundreds of them. I would estimate there were probably three-hundred American Goldfinches, the largest flock I have ever seen or heard.

I listened from half-way up the hill. There were chickadees in there too....a few....a couple Hairy Woodpeckers, but almost nothing else. Then, faintly, barely audibly, from the bottom of the hill, down by the lightning corner (where trees don't get to grow very tall before they are struck down) I thought I heard a Song Sparrow.

I had no intention of counting it. Song Sparrows are so ubiquitous here that I surely won't need a February "heard only" when there will be a dozen nesting around the house in a few weeks.

However, just for the heck of it I stopped at the lightning corner on the way down, and there came the call again. This enterprising fellow has staked out an old rosebush for a summer home.

Year bird, ca-ching. It was a nice walk in the wild spring wind, despite the lack of birdy diversity. You get to see some different views of the land, and I got the sparrow.

And then, when I was walking the pup, the first Red-winged Blackbird of the year showed up in the ash tree by the sitting porch. Wow, a toofer!

The Edge

We are always balancing. With a Jack Russell guy in the house there is always the issue of adequate exercise. Well, actually adequate as a concept related to activity for a terrier is not an attainable goal, but one must try. How do you get him enough without letting him get into trouble?

You really can't do it on a leash..... Unless perhaps you had one five miles long. We have a nice chain link kennel that served many Border Collies as a partial exercise yard, but Ren uses that.

Thus there are few options other than to let the little stinker run free some of the time. That's where the keeping out of trouble part comes in. He knows you can't catch him.

Do not attempt to combine this with birding. I was standing in the yard letting him race around playing the fool, while I trained my new binoculars on an immature Bald Eagle that was passing over.

WHAM. He hit my legs going about fifty. Needless to say they heard the resulting lecture in town. I won't even try that again.

And he chases horses. Fifteen-hundred-pound horses like Sunny, who hates him with the devil's own passion.

Thus I must schedule exercise around horses, bird walks, and cars coming in and out.

And hope his natural gregariousness brings him to the door rather than the back 40. Because I can't keep up with him and only a fool would try. The minus twenty weather helped with this concept.....I only had to close the door with him on the other side of it once and he decided that coming in was the better part of running away.

This morning I bird walked for a few, just up in the back yard. At least six pairs of cardinals, plus the usual suspects made for a nice trip. Next came the pup, as it is Sunny's day to go out.

He raced down to the heifer barn. I stood there humming elevator music and waiting. He came right back, as he really likes to be with his people. However, he brought something along and proceeded to gobble it down, big pieces of nasty dribbling down from both sides of his mouth. Ack. JRTs will eat anything! He grabs wood and runs away to eat it before I can get to him.

I ran over to see what he had, fearing he had somehow acquired suet from the suet feeder, but no, there were egg shells there. Ah, yes, a lot of eggs froze in the cold snap and LIz buried them in the manure pile.

I guess Ren and Jade dug them up. You cannot imagine how fast a JRT can run when there is a big treat at the end. He did come back, evidently having found his fill of tasty treats, but I asked Liz for a good rebury. I dread to even think what he will come up with next. 

The Peggy Channel plus Puppy

The Peggy Channel

This one picked out a new coat the other night and came out to model it yesterday. She made it known that she would like her picture taken and so......this is obviously all very hilarious....but serious business too. 

All the news....

I humbly apologize for prolonged absence. We have all been so sick as to seem unfamiliar....who is that grey blob in the mirror anyhow? Cheeks like cherries, lips like lizards? Nope, nobody I know.

And scheduling's been hard. When you have to pencil three-hour blocks of time for coughing into your dance card, there's not much room for waltzing....or typing.

Flu shots were futile. Some got 'em some didn't; none benefited. Jade went straight to the doctor and got good drugs, and may have gotten better quicker than the rest of us...but maybe not too. He was the first with it and he's still pale enough that his dark lashes make him look as if he's wearing kohl. 

However, this morning I felt a faint burst of pleasure at rising to find the sun shining on a cold, but cheerful morning. Optimism....I had nearly forgotten it, but there it was, tapping me on the shoulder.

Bout time. I have fed the birds faithfully....but have not unscrewed the big feeder to load it up since last week. I knew I'd never get it back together again. I'm still not up to it today, but maybe tomorrow. Meanwhile they can eat off the trays and the ground and the oak log the boss topped with the bottom of a barrel for a feeder.Had to feed the doggies over the sink, as I had a hard time hitting the bowl.What is is with canned dog food anyhow? It goes everywhere but where you point it.

During our illness interim Mother Nature went plumb off her meds. We went from pretty decent weather to at least 22 below overnight. With howling gales strong enough to pick up the metal lawn chairs and give 'em a whoflung. Not a big deal normally, but they were FROZEN INTO THE GROUND!!!

Thankfully, something made the boss suggest that the next time we sold a load of hay we spend the money buying a load of wood from our logger. I said, "Why wait?" (and wondered why I hadn't thought of that myself. The weather makes getting up to the woods really hard and being sick doesn't improve things any...and of course getting wood in a few seasons ahead is simply not done around here.)

So Friday, a faithful friend brought us in a load of logs. Good thing because even with them, we could barely get the house above freezing.

Two days later it was fifty. Nothing like a seventy-degree temperature variation in as many hours.

Then we, and a goodly percentage of the other landowners around here (judging from chatter at the Post Office) received a Priority mailing from a solar farm building company wanting to make non-binding agreements on people's land.

I dunno know about you, but when somebody starts talking about doing things on our land I get nervous. This ain't just real estate. It's HOME!

So I ask for your help.....

I have come to realize over the years of writing this that the people who read it share a collective knowledge of thousands of topics that would rival an encyclopedia.....

So, do any of you know anything about Cypress Creek? I have been able to discover that they are huge and have fingers in many pies, all over the country, but not much else. Their folder on the table by my computer makes me nervous.

Meanwhile, if you see anyone doubled over coughing, stay away from them....you do not want this bug.

Still the best strategy with flu

Plague

We have the flu

It's sad but true.

Our throats are raw

Our lungs like glue.....

Each day we feel a little better

We really hope that you don't getter

Meanwhile....

We have the flu

And are quite blue

And, yes, after two days of the girls taking care of me, I can at least get up and type silly stuff. Thankfully

Cardinal Sin

Sharp-shinned Hawk

There have been hunters here all winter..... A Cooper's Hawk hit the big window a couple weeks ago. Our fledgling birder, little Peggy, goes to that window every single day now and asks where the bird went.

"It flew away," I tell her, but she always asks again. 

I thought that was who was sending all the birds on all the feeders up in a whirl every little while and bouncing them out of the trees and hedgerows willy-nilly.

However, when I was at the sink this morning I saw a small hawk chasing a cardinal around the fence between the backyard and the horse yard. I grabbed the camera to see if I could find the fray and hurried up through the snow.

To my astonishment the hawk had a female Northern Cardinal trapped up against the snow fence that surrounds my old round pen where I started the Border Collies on sheep. And he was utterly unafraid of me. 

He wanted that hen cardinal and he wanted her bad. I took a bunch of photos, waited for the cardinal to get brave and leave, and then left him to it.

I know, I know, you are not supposed to interfere with nature and all that, but dagnabbit, those are MY cardinals. Let the hawk eat starlings. Or House Sparrows! He could feast on fifty or sixty of them and I wouldn't complain.

Seriously though, much as I find it disconcerting to see the feeder birds on the menu, hawks have to eat too. This little sharpie will keep our local fliers honest as well as adding another bird to the year list.

Over the past few years we have seen many more Sharp-shinned and Cooper's Hawks around here, whether because the population is increasing or our habitat is appealing I don't know. For whatever reason it is nice to see them. 

Saw this guy and an immature down by the river the other day

Eye of Newt?

Eye of the Tiger?

Well, actually it's not an eye at all. It's a baby chick inside an egg being set upon by a fluffy blue Cochin hen. She is one of several that Liz has brooding down in the heifer barn. We went a'candling last night and got to see this tiny Belgian Bearded Danver embryo flipping and blipping around inside its shelly chamber...like a little nautilus without the curves.

There are quite a few eggs in a similar state down there, just waiting for the days to pass until hatching time.

There are also a couple-few eggs up here at the house, waiting to be sold to hungry customers. No chickies inside these, I promise. That's for you, Joe. lol

Men

Turning this.....

We're manly men.....

Into this

Imagine splitting logs that large, some of them with grain like this, with an ax

Ingenuity

Farmers are known for it...making something from nothing, finding a new way to do  a thing, or getting by without buying. These photos show a tandem hay rake setup the boss built  many moons ago.

It is beyond simple, but it does most of the same jobs an expensive commercial model could. Of course there are no hydraulics involved, but that is generally a good thing from my point of view. He got the idea from a couple of older farmers he knew, modified it a bit to suit his circumstances. we still use it, at least twenty years later.

Many a windrow has been rolled into another one to save trips over the field and thus time and fuel with me or one of the guys at the wheel.

 Raking hay was probably my favorite job back when I drove tractor every day. It is undemanding enough to allow the mind to wander.....but not so much so that you fall asleep counting Barn Swallows. Still I was grateful to have the dual rakes and for the time they saved us.