Meanwhile, in a Tree Stand Nearby

In the stand before the sun came up. Sitting in the cold pearly reflected light, listening, when the sounds began.

Clack. 

Antler or brush?

Clack, crash, crash, clack, clack, clack, clack, definitely deer.

Definitely two deer.

Then came a loud scuffling, snorting, crashing, banging and bashing. Cough! Bark! Cough! Did you ever hear a deer bark? There is nothing quite like the sound.

Two bucks were fighting right in the 30-acre Lot. I am told it was the most amazing experience in the world, listening to that battle out there in the dark, senses heightened by the lack of light, only the scent of the rut and the sound of the fight to tell the tale.

Later came the light and shortly after sunup came one buck, a heavy 7-pointer. The victor. Maybe, maybe not.

Like in fishing it was of course the smaller of the pair. The big one got away.

It was the first shot of the  season (other than sighting in) of the .308 Winchester recently added to the collection here.

We will be eating well this winter....

Boom Sticks

At four-ish or so in the morning the Super Moon lights up the ice fog like a magic wand. Everything is still dripping from the rain over the past few days and the lone spruce seems a whole dark forest in the not quite light. The yard between the house and heifer barn seems as if you might need to access them through a wardrobe, if you know what I mean. I have to just stand and look for a while, so eerie and alien the morning seems.

Then, come six or seven, the boom sticks start. To the southeast a throaty shotgun roars. One shot. Probably either a deer harvested or a clean and admitted miss.

To the southwest the sharp crack of a medium-sized rifle. Another single shot, another case of the same probable outcome. All around us, north of the river, south, east, and west of our farm, shots ring out everywhere. We have been hearing people sighting in, but this is different. Purposeful. Deadly.

Then to the east, boom, boom, boom, boom....and one more lone, trailing, echoing boom of disappointment. Nope, you didn't get anything but the flashing view of a bobbing white tail, leaving the area on the run.And maybe an adrenaline rush that messed with your aim. Them projectiles is expensive these days....calm down and take your time.

Yeah, it's opening day of the south deer season here in NY. There will be no more wearing drab clothing to go out counting birds....in fact I won't be going counting at all for a while....

However there will be something other than beef on the menu....just sayin'. After the hard years around the 2009 dairy crash I got very good at cooking alternate meats. And we will have some to cook.

Ice Cold Apple Goodness

Frosty pink fogginess

Right at this moment I am enjoying an Ozark Gold apple that was on the tree half an hour ago.

We went out to our favorite orchard, Bellinger's to pick Pink Ladies, having decided that it is going to take a second bushel to get us through the winter....they are getting eaten quite quickly. Seems as if everybody likes them, including Peggy.

It was cold and foggy and spooky and beautiful out there all alone among the trees. Geese were echoing somewhere above, unseen in the thick cottony fog. 

There sure is a lot of good picking left, and I guess the orchard will be open until T-Day, if you are interested in getting some for yourself. The Pink Lady trees are bent right down with brilliant, blushing fruit. The boss and I picked a bushel in no time.

As always I wandered the nearby rows for a couple of other kinds to finish out the bags.....including four Granny Smiths and the Ozarks.

Wish I could share with you how delicious this apple is. I only picked four of them too, and if not for digestive discretion I would eat them all right now, while they are still so cold.

However.......

Invisible Geese

Throwtheballthrowtheballthrowtheball....
throw it now, please, please, please, throwtheball

Out with Finnbar well before sunup. Geese were flying over, calling like the wild hunt. Finn thought that they were mighty fine and raced around looking up for them.

He loves birds about as much as I do and follows finches and sparrows back and forth across the lawn as long as he is out and they will fly....

Me, I looked up too, to see if they flew across the moon. I have always wanted to see a night bird silhouetted on the moon and never have. I know people who have taken spectacular photos of them. I have seen a fantastical night painting of Canadas flying across a silver mountain lake against the moon....but I have never seen it myself.

Maybe someday. 

Happy Birthday Dad

If you see this fine man today, wish him a very happy birthday. Love you dad!

Some of his amazing wood carvings

Vintage

Wanna buy a cinnamon roll? 

Magnum does NOT look happy

Who dat?

So dear to my heart

Wannabe

Heifer barn moonset the other morning

Yesterday was a saga of frustrated rain, kind of a snow day wannabe. It was cold and grim and drippy and not much was accomplished.

I never went anywhere but out to feed the birds and shuttle doggies and still found a tick crawling on my ear. 

Dagnabbit! Enough of that. I put Sevin all around the path under my bird feeder arbor. It isn't going to bother any pollinators this time of year, but maybe it will debug the chippy-munks, which simply refuse to get it over with and hibernate for Pete's sake.

Today is another grim and grungy sort of effort. Brrr......You all stay warm and dry now!

NotOurCat

Recycling

This Week

The Farm Side is about the Farm Toys for Tots campaign, which is not being carried out this year, but you can still do it on your own. What kid wouldn't love a nice new farm toy?

And on this movie....Milk Men  ....which I watched and found informative and thought-provoking. Dairy farming has a timelessness and universality that might be belied by modern perceptions of what makes a farm....

Warning-Graphic Video

"Videos that contain graphic content can shock, offend and upset.....

Are you sure you want to see this?"

In this age of malware, viruses, and other attacks on our electronic devices, this warning on a video our boy shared with me had me backing away....

So I asked him, do I want to see this?

He assured me that I did, so I watched.

My tender, delicate, snowflake-like sensitivities were horrifically offended...

Or maybe not. 

See it was just this silly-looking guy with a white rodent of some sort, which he placed on top of an obviously already opened beer bottle, which he held up in his yard, declaiming about the "coolest bottle opener in the word."

(I guess he is famous....ish, but not in my world. Never heard of the guy.)

A not particularly well-focused hawk grabbed the ratty thing and flew away, dumping the top off the beer in the process. The guy then drank it. 

I personally wasn't too impressed with the idea of drinking a beer after a rat sat on it. Or by the guy's bulging beer belly, which he waved around like a battle flag.

I was much more interested in what kind of hawk it was....Red-shouldered I think. The guys says he has two living in the yard, wild, and that they have been there for ten years. I wonder how much beer it took to tame them enough to come in like that.

However, graphic? Not really. There was no blood or gore. I suppose if you like mice your feelings could be hurt. It wasn't a particularly fair fight. Or if idiotic rednecks make you need a safe space, this would not be the video for you. However, I think the warning was just a tiny bit of overkill. Pun intended.

Personally when I heard something scrabbly and nasty in the pantry over the weekend, I was indeed offended and major efforts to remove same are ongoing.

I wonder if I could borrow the hawks.....

I Always Wanted to Moon Somebody

I know there will be thousands of photos shared everywhere of tonight's super moon, with every crater and freckle showing. I lack the skill to do that, and so must play the fool instead.

Anyhow, here are some moons. 

Thanks

You know who you are. Brother, uncles, cousins, friends, neighbors, and strangers, people I have met once and much admire, people I have never and will never meet.

Thank you for taking time out of your lives that you might have much preferred to spend in other ways, and spending that time in who knows what nightmares, for the sake of people like me.

Thanks!

The Things you See

Inside a duck blind

At Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge

A one-legged Ring-billed Gull 

Eating road killed cheeseburger

In a McDonald's parking lot

Double decker farm peeps on the prowl

Ferocious kitchen wolves going in for the kill

There is no time for boredom, no way, nohow....

Birds before Coffee

I was on the way up to the cable with Finn, when the teeniest rooster crow ever was emitted from behind the wood stove. It was a Silver-laced Wyandotte that won't come to the barn and instead roosts up there. He sounds like the smallest bantam, but is a normal sized bird. I wonder how long he will hang on with all the wild predators around here. 

Then a Red-tailed Hawk came sailing in to perch in the dead elm among the starlings. It was pretty funny. Sun not up yet, cold as a well digger's elbow, and the starlings just sat there for a moment with this giant...as compared to them...predator shouldering them aside on the bare limb.

Suddenly they realized, and took off in unison like scalded cats.
 

Spike

I know Red-tails don't hunt starlings much, but I don't blame them for getting gone. On cold winter days the hawks sometimes come down and hunt, on the wing, under the eaves of the old heifer barn. It is a sight to see, these great big clumsy hawks of the open fields and forests trying to turn upside down in flight to take starlings and House Sparrows out of the eaves. I think they must get some because they do it a lot.

Turn about is fair play. A little while later a mob of crows had the hawk captive on a telephone pole and were jeering and leering at it like the bullies they are. Could this be Manhattan? 

Anyhow, all these cool birds being around got me out for a bird walk before I even turned on the computer or got coffee. It was sweet too. Sometimes it's as if God opens Heaven and pours out some birds just to make my day. 

It was a gorgeous dawn, freckled with Juncos and full of frost and sunshine. I am most thankful and will gladly take any others like it that are sent my way.

Visiting the Redheads

For the entire month of October my birding was limited. That whole tick thing..... Then weather, being busy, and a renewed onset of tick phobia kept me from getting much birding or walking done.

Finally, Monday, late in the day, when dusk was just then falling I went out on the hills to visit the redheads. The oaks are about the only trees still showing color here, but they are lovely. Their bright red heads glowed in the late light like matches against the dark limbs of the other trees and the shadowy bulk of the mountains.

I was happy to still be able to climb the hill, although there weren't quite as many birds as I might have liked to see. I think I saw an American Tree Sparrow, first of the fall season, but my binoculars were way out of adjustment, and by the time I got them right it was gone.

Then there was the strangeness...... I heard a sound like a small motor right over my head. I thought it was a plane at first. When I finally realized that it was a flock of about 40 very fast flying robin-sized birds it was too late to get the binoculars on them. Not any kind of blackbird I don't think because there was no chirping sound, only those very loud wings. I do mean loud.

I wonder what they were. Except for them the birding was late fall ordinary, chickadees, juncos and robins...

There were some really large coyote tracks and some mysterious smoke as well. 
Now it is time to play nice again. Put some kitties or puppies on Facebook, or birds...birds would work.....and put the terrible foulbrood behind us.

On the bright side...no more campaign fliers. Think of the happy trees!

Who Worked 9 Hours

And then drove 4 1/2 hours home....

To vote......?

Yeah, this guy. And now he has to drive back.

And yes, his parents are proud of him, although I will be a lot happier when I hear that he is safely in Boston....

Dug out my favorite red flannel shirt and.....