Mi Vida NOCA

I know, I know, it's Mi Vida Loca. But since we sold the cows and our world contracted to a microcosm of its former self, I have kept myself entertained with birds...as you have no doubt noticed....

So for me it has become mi vida NOCA, the latter being the four digit code for Northern Cardinal. BTW I am learning this code for listing because it is a lot quicker to write RWBL than it is to scribble Red-winged Blackbird. I keep hoping the FBI will snoop on one of my lists and think I am a super spy.

It's fun and it gets me and the boss out of the house. He likes to tool around town to see who has a nice barn, who bought a new tractor, whose rows are straight and whose are curly.

I like to find ticks for my lists.

It's kinda loca, but it works for us.

Anyhow, yesterday in the midst of cold howling wind, he needed to go over to Fonda to get a gallon of milk. He asked if I wanted to go down to the boat launch. Since we had seen Green-winged Teal there the day before and listed them on eBird, I agreed despite the nasty weather. GWTE are among my favorite ducks right up there with Ruddy Ducks and Northern Pintails. When the sun hits those green heads there isn't a thing in Oz to compare.

As we arrived another gentleman did too. He was tall and well dressed and sported good binoculars. Ooohhh, a birder! I have only ever met one other birder in our travels, up at Montezuma a while back.

I so wanted to go over and chat, but just couldn't (see introvert, shy, etc.)

Next he took a huge spotting scope out of his car, put it on a tripod, and began scanning the hundreds of geese, scattering of assorted ducks, crows, RWBLs etc. I was consumed with curiosity.

Then he began to fold everything up to leave...and came over to talk to us!

He had come because someone had reported Green-winged Teal there. Maybe it was even my eBird report that sent him down to the confluence of the Schoharie and the Mohawk.

Anyhow, we chatted for a minute or two about the birds there and about Iceland Gulls, which are seen around here now and then, and which I think I may have seen, and then he was on his way. A couple of Bald Eagles sailed by as if in celebration.

It was a little on the loca side, but super cool as well. You simply never know when serendipity will send you a special moment in your wonderful, amazing, and frequently crazy life.

National Agriculture Day

Broadway, my favorite cow of all time

Is today. 

But really every day is ag day for pretty much everyone. We all eat. Most of us wear clothes. We drive cars with tires on roads and like to color our walls with paint.

Bama, back in the day when she was a workin' goil

We like plastic stuff and it all isn't made from fossil fuels.

There are many other byproducts of farm production that we might not think about as well. Green fields, waving wheat, open space, and clean air are some of these. Farms provide homes for birds and wildlife too.

From NRCS: 

"With more than 70 percent of the land in the United States privately owned, it follows that most of the wildlife in the countryside depends on private landowners. Farmers are installing grass, tree, and shrub plantings; ponds; riparian buffer strips; and other wildlife habitat at record rates. Some farmers provide bird and bat houses, while others plant or leave food plots of corn, millet, or other grains specifically for wildlife.

Pheasants, grouse, quail, prairie chickens, mourning doves, and songbirds, as well as leopard frogs, diamond-back terrapin, red bats, and other wildlife, benefit from habitat that farmers and ranchers establish on their land. Farmers appreciate and enjoy wildlife supported by good habitat and also benefit from pollination and pest control by beneficial insects."

We do our bit here at Northview, as best we can, and not just on Ag Day either. Although it isn't always pretty, the land here is home to deer, woodchucks, both varieties of common squirrels, red and grey, sometimes fishers, both red and grey foxes, bats, opossums, skunks, rabbits, chipmunks, weasels, voles, coyotes, moles, mink sometimes, and assorted rodents, both good and awful.

As for birds, we got 'em. So far this year we have seen 45 species. We found 88 last year and are hoping to break 90 this year. If Lyme Disease, bum knees, and other potential problems stay away that is...crosses fingers, knocks wood, and thinks good thoughts....

Agriculture is the number one industry in many states, some of them surprising. Among them are Maryland, Georgia, Virginia, South Carolina, Montana, and at least in 2010, New York State. (This changes now and then.)

However, the farmer's share of the US food dollar is only  seventeen cents. Not such a big payoff for all that comes from agriculture.

Whose Day is it Anyhow?

This guy's.

If you see him today in the far away home of Philly cheese steaks, wish him a happy birthday....or hit him up here if it's handier.

Meanwhile, happy birthday, kiddo. Hope the weekends make up for spending it on the job. Love you!

Farming Styles

Breaking a horse to lead. This Percheron was not having any of it
and threw himself down in the road after we passed. After being dragged a little bit by the Belgian pair he got up again right quick.

I expect by the end of this exercise he will know what the halter is all about.
How he got to such an age and size without knowing is another question.

Five horse assortment coming back from spreading manure on a snowy field

Large bales of straw being unloaded, probably for calf and pen bedding, on a large dairy. Nice stuff.
Despite the several freestall barns full of hundreds of cows, there was no smell except that of good quality feed.
There was also a nice pile of fresh sand for cow comfort in the free stalls and lots of cows eating and going about their bovine business.

Different things work for different folks. We went out around town a bit today while waiting for Becky to get out of work. We saw examples of some of the more old-fashioned methods of gettin' er done and passed two of the largest and most modern farms in the area a couple of miles later.

So different and yet alike in some ways as well.

Mommy, there's Eggs

"There's eggs, Mommy, there's two! Come and see, come and see!"

"Mommy!"

Eggs means new chicks in toddler speak.

In fact there are three new chickies in the incubator in the dining room. Peepeepeepeep PEEP!

Guess how many times a day a toddler peeks in through the window of the incubator....

She brought me a brown-brockled quail egg yesterday for show and tell.

After exclaiming over its amazing cuteness I asked her, "What are you going to do with that?"

"Put it in the inkerbator and hatch out a chickie," she replied. 

Science lessons for three-year-olds, free for the learning.

It's Meltin-g-g-g-g-g-g-g

One thing about a mid-March snowstorm. The after effects don't linger as long as if it were mid-winter. 

Not that there isn't still plenty to go around. Can't walk to most places that I usually like to go...

On the other hand the wrens survived and new migrants are appearing every day....a Purple Finch yesterday. 

Becky bought me new glasses this week...been wearing the same ones for around fifteen years or so. I like them.....although the ground seems to be farther away than it used to be. Sure can see the birds and trees better!

Hopping down the bunny trail....

Otherwise not much for excitement. We saw a big police presence on the bike path yesterday as they stopped snowmobiles to look them over. Must be most of them were in compliance as they were going on their way. I don't begrudge them their fun. It has been a really open winter up until now. Wish they would be careful though...so many deaths this year...and stay off the lakes!

The Dregs of the Dervish

Click me, click me!

Sometimes after a storm the light will stagger you with beauty, plumb blind you with excess brightness, then throw a veil over your vision, with blowing snow causing white-outs that sometimes dismay and bamboozle you. We stayed home during the worst of the aftermath..... then ventured into the dregs of the dervish.

Sometimes it IS easy being Green

Or at least wearing green. I am sporting the Argosy Casino , Hotel and Spa sweatshirt Liz brought me home from a National Farmers Organization meeting in Missouri a few years back. Although green is one of my favorite colors for some reason I don't seem to have much in the way of green clothing. We did have our corned beef the other day though.....

Been saving the photo above since we visited Daphne, Alabama late last year....just waiting for today to share it. This was growing in the park we visited there.

Anyhow, Happy St. Patrick's Day to everyone, Irish or otherwise.....with all those McGiverns and McIntoshes back there in the pedigree I can wear my green shirt legitimately.

Yesterday I rode up to Bass Pro in Auburn with Alan and then the boss took me out around town for a bit. On the way west we saw so much evidence of the seriousness of the storm...it was downright sobering. An overturned semi, wheels toward the road, just left there awaiting resources to move it. Another semi, thirty feed off the road, with no tracks anywhere around it so it had been there a while....and the poor driver was still sitting inside it waiting for help. They were finally removing it when we came back east. Hundreds...literally....of power company trucks convoying east....

Roads everywhere were thronged with birds, assorted blackbirds, Snow Buntings, Horned Larks and even a single Eastern Meadowlark. I have read reports of Woodcocks struggling and starving all over the state and haven't seen or heard our Carolina Wrens in two days. Normally they are among the first birds I hear every morning and visit the feeders off and on all day. This is going to be bad for the early migrants I'm afraid.

Horned Lark on a snowbank up by Bichler's old farm

Lookit This!!!!

Right under the feeder today!

Not much to Sing About

Before the tempest

Today's other post was actually written yesterday..... 

And then.....After the fun with little birdies was over and the sun went down, news about storm damage began to trickle in.

Several barns collapsed. So sorry for the folks involved. Cows had to be moved but at this point we don't know much more. Farmers all over the region were forced to dump milk, as roads were impassable and trucks outlawed in some areas. This was a terrible, awful, nasty bad storm.

Then as I sat in my chair, done for the day, glad of it and looking at my phone, stories began to pop up from town. They were not good news.

Fultonville Methodist Church, a lovely and iconic white board building just a couple of blocks from where we used to live in town, was on fire.

Although we never attended services there, the kids went to an after school program there that they really enjoyed. Friends got married there. People we know well live on the street and their homes were threatened. We could see the flames from the living room.

It was a sad night.

When the going gets Tough

Yes, it was snowing that hard....

Yesterday the birds were so desperate that we often had thirty or forty Brown-headed Cowbirds at the feeder, seventy-five Red-winged Blackbirds, three pairs of Northern Cardinals, and dozens upon dozens of others. It was as if more and more of them kept pouring in all day, as the word got out about the seeds.

I kept filling the feeders all day as the snow piled up and the hordes emptied them. Around noon I went out for the forth time to find a half a dozen Black-capped Chickadees hurriedly diving in while I was there...they are not afraid of me and the other birds are...in hopes of getting at least a couple of seeds. However, the feeder was empty.

I filled my hand with sunflower seeds....within seconds one was perched in my palm grabbing one. That is desperation. I have coaxed them to eat from my hand before, but it has always taken a long, cold wait in stillness, until some bold individual snatched a seed and fled. This one sat on my hand long enough for me to feel his tiny weight and wonder at such trust and such hunger.

I didn't want to tease them when they were so hungry, so I filled the feeder and came back inside. Whenever I went out to shovel out the door so we could still get out of the house, they all rushed in to eat while the other birds fled.

And then it got so bad that even the wilder birds utterly ignored me while I worked. Not a good storm at all.

Contrast

February 18th

Same view today