TWTWTW

Migration has begun. Alan saw a few hundred thousand assorted geese up by Montezuma this morning. I saw a good 500 here. Oddly, I was watching for the lone Snow Goose that has been hanging around all winter and didn't see it.

However, when I came in to look over the photos I took there it was in the only skein of Canadas that I photographed.

Meanwhile, all is quiet here. Everyone but the boss and Becky and I went to the Farm Show. Hope they have safe travels and a great time. If it doesn't rain I'll prolly get the boss to drag me up to Bear Swamp to see what we can see.

The Song of my People

Won't you sing with me? A-B-C-D...arf arf Pull me along. Pet me.
Little creeper! I dug it out and Liz is going to dispose of it....er...put it away

I was taking the dogs out just before sunrise. Mack the terror races around even on the porch. He would make a great barrel horse, so small a circle can he make. This morning his rummaging assault on all things porch-bound was accompanied by the weirdest music.

Sound track for a rat hound or something.

For a minute I thought I had somehow acquired a new ringtone on my phone. Who would be calling me so early and what was that awful music?

But, no, it was one of the many noisy toys Peggy has stashed here and there around the place, singing me a song of small people. Evidently it is terrier-triggered and does not feel safe there under the cooler where it is hiding.

All I can say is ACK.

The Really Big Pigeon

The spring blackbirds are all back, Brown-headed Cowbirds, Common Grackles, and Red-winged Blackbirds....the sky just rings with their calls. Yesterday was such a great day for getting out and seeing what was happening that I opened the Sitting Porch and went out there to....well....to sit....

It was great! Warm, breezy, birdy... I was training the binoculars on the river, while snatching glances at the flyway over the Horse Pasture, watching for blackbirds and checking out ducks and geese.

Plop, something landed just to my left. There were pigeons on the steeple, I figured that they had been eating well.

Plop! Plop! 

Dang! Whatchu been eatin' Botat?

It kept happening. I kept watching the river.

Finally a faint giggling reached my ears. 

Far from overfed pigeons, the culprit was the guy above, throwing little snowballs to get my attention. He wanted to see if I wanted to ride down to the river to see what might be down there. I did. We did. Nothing stirring....but wow, that was a really huge pigeon! Not to mention an awful wise guy.

Great Grey Owl

This has been a big winter for rarities in the Adirondacks, what with the Ross's Gull at Tupper Lake, and now some Great Grey Owls at Massena.

And no, I didn't see any of these birds.

However, there is a Great Grey on my life list just the same. Back when my next younger brother was finishing up college in Ft. Collins, CO, my significant other at the time and I went out with my truck to bring his stuff home.

I had never been so far west before...and haven't since..and it was quite an adventure, fraught with flat tires, and high altitude, which is not the friend of the old Chevy carburetor, and many other interesting phenomena.

Not the least of these were the birds. We saw Magpies, Golden Eagles, Steller's Jays. Grey Jays, Clark's Nutcrackers and one morning at dawn, a Great Grey Owl.

Alas, I didn't even have my glasses on, just got up from the camp bed in the back of our truck and peeped out the window to see him roosting on the picnic table right next to us. He was so different from anything I had seen or imagined at the time that it took me all day to get him ID'd. What a great bird! I don't need photographs because he is imprinted forever on my brain.

Innocent

I was in the living room yesterday, talking on the phone with our boy....when I heard from the kitchen the sounds of the auxiliary family coming home...Peggy laughing, boots stomping, sheep blatting....

Wait! Sheep? Or lambs really. I'd know that shrill cry anywhere. But there were no lambs a few minutes ago....

We quickly disconnected and I hurried to the kitchen to find two bum lambs that were given to the kids yesterday. Peggy was ecstatic, dancing and singing and laughing.

The lambs were less so, exploring, little hoofs banging on the floor, bawling, and piddling all over the place.

They are now down at the barn, which works for me, even if it is less to Peggy's taste in lifestyles....just file it all under never a dull moment....this time I am innocent in the whole livestock in the kitchen thing.

Farm Chick Chic

Ready for mud season!

Finally

Got up the nerve to call our accountant and explain that my lifeline in all things bookkeeping is no longer here to save me and I don't know what to do. How to fix the mess I make of the books each year......It is a terrible thing to have to be practical when you have lost one of your dearest friends, but alas, taxes still loom and somehow I must do this alone this year.

I talked to a really nice lady who understood and suggested bringing in a backup copy of my books for her to go over.

So Becky and I are printing off bank statements that I seem to have lost...I'm not completely alone I guess....and piling papers together. I have been stalling...and stalling....and stalling.....

And being sad, yeah, that too. I will miss the days....I already miss them....of talking in the driveway on bookkeeping breaks...we were always so busy that if we didn't have work to bring us together we would never have seen each other.... enjoying the birds and the sun, things that were much more fun than talking taxes. I miss saving things and thinking, 'she will need this, and she will need that'. Being tidier than is my nature to make the job a little easier when we finally got down to it.

Miss phone calls that may have been infrequent but always lasted for hours, while we took on the troubles of the world. Miss having my friend in the back of my mind, pretty much all the time. Whenever we spoke we always said, "I think of you every day."

And it was true. Sometimes we kept in touch via this blog...she liked to read it and we would talk about blog stuff when we did find a minute.

It's been a little over two weeks now. Two minutes. Two lifetimes. Too much to think about but I seem to have no choice. Guess I had better get busy piling papers.

GBBC

Is what I have been up to this weekend. Both of my guys have taken me out birding, and I have done several lists. Got two new species for the year, a pair of Hooded Mergansers and a single Brown-headed Cowbird (it is officially spring now). The former was down on the river yesterday, the latter on my feeder at just past daybreak today.

Alan and I dined on McDonald's  pancakes down at the river this AM, a feast indeed. After we ate, I was out with the binoculars looking west, counting Mallards when Alan hissed, "Mom, Mom, Mom!!"

"Look the other way!"

And there was an immature Bald Eagle sailing in to do a little Mallard counting himself. With all the hundreds and hundreds of them around this year he should be pretty well feasted.

Sunrise was stunning. I made the doggies wait while I went out and grabbed some photos...good thing too, because it only lasted five minutes or so. 

Nice minutes though. Warm days like this make it hard to stay indoors and do stuff I am supposed to.....

MooseQuest

Fail.

Or maybe not....

Throwback

It has come to my attention that it is Throwback Thursday. It is also relapse Thursday so please bear with me. 

Thinking about painting on ag bags and baleage to deter birds....

I hunted out some of the boss's old graffiti from back in the day........if you have time do so, go look at his art at that link. He was pretty funny....the stuff in those bags is chopped hay by the way. They are considerably lumpier than they are supposed to be. I don't remember just what was up that year but he was having problems with the bagger. Alas this is not his best art...those images are on the dead computer, which is away awaiting resuscitation. 

He used to use spray paint to mark the bags as to what field the forage inside came from and the date it was harvested and also to deter birds.

I think it helped. See, crows will pick open bags, maybe in search of corn kernels, mice that have drilled up into the bags from below, or just because it is fun to pick holes in big white bags. It becomes a never-ending job to patch the holes with bag tape, but in order to keep the fermented feed within fresh, air tightness must be maintained as much as possible. The whole mice thing isn't much help with that either. It's a place where coyotes and foxes eating them up can be a help, except when they tear bags to get at them. I used to have rolls of bag tape all over the place.

Here is a story about painting on bags...from Ireland, but birds are birds and bags are bags.....

And here is a product intended to shield bags from such damage.

A bit more farm graffiti of a different sort if you are interested.

Remember this girl with this cow?

Normal

Talking on the phone with my baby brother. On the mend enough to laugh a bit, if still weaker than a kitten and dizzy and all that stuff.

In comes the boss and writes me a note. There is a white chicken on the bridge and it won't let him cross with the skid steer. He needs to get it over there to plug it in so its cold-blooded engine will start in the morning. 

But the chicken says, "Thou Shall Not Pass."

The boss wants to know if I know anything about the chicken. Having been in bed for several days I don't know anything about anything, so I send him to Becky to call Liz to find out about yon chicken.

I won't repeat the response, because it was profane and didn't auger well for the bird's future. 

However, when he went back outside it was gone anyhow. 

Then came the dog. Mack is such a heinous little Hell hound that I really can't let him loose in the kitchen unless I watch him very closely. I felt sorry for him, having been crated a lot the past few days of my illness, so I had him on a leash, upon which I was sitting, while I tried to talk to my brother.

In between, I was untangling him from the chair...the dog, not the brother...and giving him a little more slack to get the ball he just rolled out of his reach.

Suddenly I glanced down and rapidly excused myself to bro. There was a fat green caterpillar rummaging around the floor dragging a chair. See, Liz puts up an old green sheet between my two dogs' crates and Ren when she passes, because to say that they loathe each other would be to put it kindly.

Mack had wound himself up in the sheet until he was completely covered, no head, no tail, etc., but unperturbed was chasing his ball around, dragging the chair that it had hung on.

He was so entangled that it was a challenge to get him out, but honey badger...or Jack Russell don't care.....

 It's a wonder anyone ever calls me.

Did Ja Miss Me

The correct answer to that in this family is, "Were you gone?"

Well, not far. The boss went to the hospital healthy, for a meeting about the care of an elderly relative, and came home carrying a bug.

THE BUG really. It deserves such emphasis, believe me. 

He got sick first and was miserable for several days. Misery loves company and all that stuff, so we all joined him in his endeavor. A revolving door on the loo would have been a fine thing indeed.

Worst part of this particular plague is that the tummy symptoms, which are savage by themselves, are followed by respiratory distress in sad proportion. Alan and Becky both called in sick and if you know them that is not their norm.

Anyhow, somehow, here we are, all of us for the most part past the worst. I am still substituting Gatorade for morning coffee, but rumors of my demise...etc.......Not well by any means but healthy enough to sit at the computer wasting time when there are deadlines to meet, even though inspirations are scant.

If you have any ideas for a Farm Side that I can whip up by tomorrow noon I am open to suggestions. Thanks

Snow

This ragged old cherry tree on our eastern boundary doesn't look like much.

The snow has the exact texture of shaving cream. Frozen shaving cream. Round puffs of it stick to everything, but it is so cold that it is as solid as a meringue cookie. Only much less tasty.

However birds love it.
There was even a Rough-legged Hawk in it a couple weeks ago

It was so cold and windy this morning that the birds didn't even come in when I fed them. I don't think I will be going walking today....

Horse Pasture pond. Not so very fluid these days

Pretty Kitty

Becky's kitties like to watch me birding in the yard. I think they wish they could join me. No dice.

Cool Goose

Not an unusual goose...just our common Rock Pigeon

Every day I do my eBird list, usually walking out as far as I can on our own land, taking into consideration ice and temperatures. And wind. Almost every day I count Canada Geese. Some days there are only one or two. Some days there are hundreds. 

This morning I was out on the front lawn when they started straggling up off the river. With this open winter they sleep in front of the house many nights so I get to see them when they go off to the cornfields, north and south.

About the second gaggle one individual caught my eye. Even in the poor light this miserable morning it was very pale. At first I thought that it was the lone Snow Goose we have been seeing, but it looked too large.

I put the binoculars on it and to my surprise it appeared to be a leucistic Canada. It was pale tan from the neck back; only the head was normal colored. I tried for a photo but the group flew off behind the heifer barn and by the time they were back in sight they were too far off in the dim light to get more than a blur. I will be looking for this bird when we go down to the river to count.

Ice Storm

So, last night it was supposed to sleet and freezing rain a bit, then warm up and not amount to much. Then suddenly an ice storm warning was announced. Shortly thereafter my folks called that their power was out. They were not alone. There were trees down and transformers on fire all over the region.

Well, dang. They assured me that they would be okay, but I worried. No heat. No water. No way to make hot coffee. I offered to send a farmer or a professional driver to bring them here, where we have all of the above, but they declined.

So I am waiting until it is late enough to call and check on them. If they don't have power then action must be taken. 

Meanwhile the doggies cannot be outside and are very aggravated about same and thus being very aggravating. So far I have rescued my woolly hat, a receipt, which is now and forever dead and partly eaten, plus sundry other kitchen floor artifacts. I have also stopped several loud games of bitey face, prevented the tossing around of metal food dishes, also very loud, (some people who get up at three every day are napping for a bit) and finally given up and put "Who's NOT a good boy," back in his crate.

If we get the snow storm they are predicting tonight, at least they can go outside and tire themselves out in that. 

M. O. S.

More of the same that is. Liz and the baby are sick with the tummy bug. It is freezing rain outside after a goodly bout of sleet. I dropped my ring in the garbage yesterday (Becky rescued it). The geese fly out. The geese fly in. Sometimes the river teems with them, sometimes it is as barren as a banana peel. Not much new going on, just the slow passing of February days.

The doggies are here to keep complacency at bay, while I await my turn at the plague.

Who's the good doggy?
And, incidentally, who hates the skid steer?

Before I lose my Farmgirl Card

I had better share some farm stuff. Above we have the kids' old turkeys, the kids' new turkeys, the kids' newest turkeys and some of the hens and roos. Oh, and one Guinea Hen.

The Pros

There is nothing like a professional. Yesterday Alan took me to get my first professional haircut in at least ten years. I am kind of a do-it-yourselfer that way.

 Wow, it is really nice. I had no idea how much just a little tidying up could do, although I should have known. Just clearing off one counter does a lot for the kitchen, every single time.

Then Beck made me a sammich for breakfast...well, elevenses...or tenses, so to speak. She is a manager at a local fast food establishment and has worked in food service in other sorts of restaurants as well. It tasted as good as my haircut looks. Of course getting up at o'dark-thirty, walking half a mile or so in search of birds, taking the battery charger off the skid steer, multiple airings of the doggies, and sundry other interesting tasks, does make for a good appetite...but it really was a great sammich.

***I'll bet you thought I was going to write about football. Nope, the only calls in the game I watched last night were zzzzzzzs. Been spending a lot of time outdoors in the cold lately and by pretty darned early I am ready to sleep.

Dense

We have been having a lot of sammiches and mac and cheese and the like lately...all well and good, of course. We are at the mercy of an excellent cook and when she gets in the mood we surrender happily.

However, this morning I decided that it was time for some serious protein. Thus there is a gigantic block of venison sausage baking in the oven. Yeah, after this debacle I decided to try something different.

Since I have never in my life remembered to get out sausage to thaw it before cooking, and since it is packaged in very large blocks, due to people being sick and tired of vacuum sealing all day for two days, I am baking the whole darned frozen block with a little butter. I imagine that I will be able to cut it into squares pretty soon.....

It is in the oven in a big broiler pan tucked in nicely with a bit of foil. That stuff is dense. I figure we will be eating it in various form for a week, but as long as I get some for breakfast this morning I am good with that.