Band on the Run

We stopped at a favorite pond on Goldman Rd. yesterday to see what was shaking. No rare birds or anything exciting, but it is a place that never lets you down just the same.

Another pretty spot we found...too windy for many birds, but maybe later in the year

This time there was a pair of Canada Geese, one of which sported a yellow neck collar with numbers on it. 

I took some photos which showed the numbers quite clearly and came home to look up how to report the sighting.

This is the place to report bird bands that you see. I filled out the form and will be interested to see if I get a report of where the bird was banded. Won't that be cool?

You Can't go Home

Or so it's been said. However, yesterday, Beck, the boss, and I visited the old farmstead where his mother grew up. Her father farmed right on top of Fiery Hill in the town of Danube on a place that is mostly grown up to trees these days, although it appears to have been sold to someone who is building.....something.

We go most every year or two, to stop in that quiet place on that high hill and think about all the stories his mother told...of his grandfather's teams that could haul loads that no one else's could....of her being just a little girl, walking carefully barefoot down the corn rows leading the big, gentle buckskin horse on the cultivator. He never, ever stepped on her, and she remembered him so fondly.

There are many more wonderful stories of her childhood. I wish I could remember them all. She adored her father but he died far too young and left her with a hard row to hoe. 

This time we killed two birds with one stone. The boss loves to visit. I don't exactly hate it either, and I wanted to do a bird list there as a sort of a connection down the years.

At first there wasn't a whistle or a twitter to be heard. I caught the calls of a quartet of distant crows, but not one single other bird made so much as a peep.

We walked down the rutted road along the front of the land, wondering what became of the fine stone steps that led from the road up to where the house used to stand. Somewhere I have pictures of them, but darned if I remember where.

Just as I utterly despaired of hearing or seeing even a single interesting bird, a tiny singer fluttered right to us. It was so quick-moving that I couldn't get a photo even though it was less than four feet from us. A Ruby-crowned Kinglet had come to visit and followed us right up the road. Soon Chickadees, Gold Finches, and even a gobbling turkey joined him on the list.....Sure wish he had paused his flittering for a photo op but it was not to be.

A special bird, although not rare, one I have been seeking, although it surely would have been nice to find one in Montgomery County. I thought of my late mother-in-law, who was somebody very, very special, all the way home. And thought as well that it is no wonder she loved this hillside farm having grown up perched so high above a different but wonderful valley.

Almanac

So inviting...we kept saying, just a little bit farther.....

Peepers started their strident song this past weekend. We first heard them at the river one evening. They were a couple of days later here at the farm....they didn't call it Northview for nothing....but you can hear them even in the daytime now.

The boss and I essayed a roughly five-mile round-trip walk on the Erie Canal towpath yesterday and kept thinking we were hearing good birds when they called. A chorus is obvious, but a single frog tuning up is very birdlike. 

How about that big dude on the left! That is some turtle for a painted

The temperature reached 88 degrees, which made our walk a bit of a challenge....as in when we were done I was done....done for that is. Toast. You could certainly have stuck a fork in and all.

However, hitting ten thousand steps nearly every day is a good deal....mornings feel pretty frisky...at least for a couple of hours.

The old canal was full of turtles, soaking up sun after a long cold winter. The Eastern Painted Turtles perched on logs, while snappers, looking pretty much like moss-covered logs themselves, oozed slowly through the mossy water. You could only tell that they were alive by their movement and the occasional appearance of spooky dinosaur heads above the surface as they grabbed a breath.

Saw the first Coltsfoot yesterday too, down near the canal road. As above, we will see ours at least a few days, if not a couple of weeks later than this. Our north facing slope is kinda chilly.

However, along the towpath we saw something delightful. I heard the classic "killy-killy-killy" call of American Kestrels and a pair zoomed in right over our heads and began interacting in and out of a nest hole in a nearby tree. Fluttering, screaming, lots of ingress and egress of the hole. I tried for a photo, but the sun was so bright I couldn't find them in the viewfinder. It seems as if there are far more of them around this year than in recent years....much like it was before their recent decline. Out in the country you can find a pair every few miles on the power wires and yesterday I found one hunting the heifer pasture right behind the house.

That should be interesting as there is a mockingbird setting up housekeeping in a rose bush there.

The first crocus bloomed on Monday and by yesterday there were a dozen in a cheerful purple carpet. Squill is  waving tiny blue flags by the garden pond. There are buds on the daffodils! 

Jade and Liz dug out the limestone steps in front of the house and discovered a wide, slate walkway leading to the house. It is about a foot deep in soil, but Jade has been digging it out.

Things are hatching in the dining room incubator. It is getting so I don't even go look when I hear peeping....getting to be old hat.

It was a treat to hang laundry outdoors for two days and do some serious catching up.

Today we are back to normal for Upstate April, 50 or so degrees, cool, wet, and gloomy. No denying that it is spring though.

Alas and Unfortunately

Stella was a horrible storm. Oh, she sent us some birds we might never have seen otherwise, such as the Fox Sparrow and the Rusty Blackbird. And we didn't get much damage except for the farm roads and driveways, which were utterly destroyed by runoff.

However, as the massive snowbanks slowly fade and bare ground appears, so do dead birds. Dead goldfinch, dead woodpecker, and who knows what else...all around the house.

I thought we had an early woodcock, but I am certainly not hearing one now. A lot of them met their end in NYC during the storm, although I have read that more are showing up.

Amazingly the broken-winged Snow Goose is still alive and reasonably able to get around. Kind of made my day when the boss spotted her the other night down at the lock.

 

Painting

If summer is a bold acrylic painting, all hot, bright, colors and hot, hard, sun, then spring is a watercolor, soft and tender, pastel and pretty. Every sky is a new delight from the first dawn to the last glow before dark.

I cannot stay indoors. We did some birding yesterday, then Becky and I took Gil up the hill to the 30-acre Lot...an awful walk! I sure don't recommend it and won't be doing it again until it dries up a lot! However, we now know the answer to that age old question "Who's a good boy?"

It's Gil.

We sat on the tire of the chopper, where this photo was taken, and were so still that a female Harrier flew right up to us. It was the closest I have ever been to one. She bolted when she finally spotted us but we got a really nice look.

The boss fixed the house driveway, which was a near disaster after the melt and rain. He did a heckin' fine job.

I walked all the way down this morning for the first time in weeks...just because I could...and was treated to a Bald Eagle over the river.

Even the dark is welcoming at the end of a long spring day. Our peepers here at the farm are now calling, although still no Woodcock. I do like to sit on the trailer by the back door to listen and look at the solar lights Becky has been buying me. They are like midnight rainbows of light, glowing out there in the dark...I hate to come back inside.

When Life Hands You...

Sunset...no filters

...spring, you have no choice but to get out and get going. Thus time to do things like write blog posts dwindles in relation to the amount of sunshine and warm breezes that are occurring.

Sunset does Arthur Rackham

Yesterday I went outdoors with the dogs at dawn and barely came back into the house until dark. Even drank my morning coffee sitting on the snowmobile trailer.

Delta

In the sand pile

We saw good stuff in our travels. Boys with baseballs. Boys with footballs....skate boards too...boys walking and talking. All manner of kids playing outdoors, just doing stuff in the bright spring sun.

We met dads with little ones down at the river getting the poles out, ready to fish. Dozens and dozens of people walking, biking, grilling, wearing shorts and tee shirts. Some not wearing tee shirts atall...and some of them certainly should have been. 

I'll bet TV viewership was the lowest it has been since last summer except during power outages.

We drove around seeing the sights and raked the yard and enjoyed a heaping helping of outdoors. It was nice.

Plus we got to see our boy and his young lady for a little while on Saturday too! That was nice....

Even more, a heaping serving

Of little things....

Waking up way before dawn and suddenly remembering that you forgot to bring in the bird feeders last night....

Gettinguprealquick and going downstairs to find them still there. Untouched. 

Look like raccoon tracks to me....dagnabbit....

Something has been carrying them away. Something with hands dexterous enough to grasp a thin string, from which one was hanging in the Honey Locust, and drag it up into the tree to eat the suet. Something that carried away my little green Linda feeders and left them dismantled and empty. Something....I am thinking coon. This has been quite frustrating.

Washing the dog jackets to put them away. A dog in a coat is a little bit embarrassing for this farm wife...but he hasn't much fur and it has been a long, cold winter.

Roses and wine from our middle daughter...just because. Orange roses, carefully chosen because she thought the color would suit me. They are both vibrant and elegant and so pretty, like lights on a lighthouse shining out to sea....only they are shining from the windowsill over the kitchen sink where I seem to spend so much time. And sangria. I do like me some sangria now and then.

A clean, freshly-bedded, nice and fluffy, wonderfully welcoming dog run in which to park a lively Border Collie for a couple of hours until he runs off some energy. Yay, oldest kid. Good job!

A dawn chorus. Oh, there are only a few singers represented so far, a dozen or so American Robins, Song Sparrows, Northern Cardinals. and not much else really, but the joyous noise is sure welcome. In a few weeks it will be a challenge to pick out all the notes, but for now the simple country songs are easy on the ear and promising of spring, even though it is frog belly cold and windy as Kansas out there.

And last but not least....

Good coffee....

Still more Little Things

The boss is quite enamored of this building, the former Putman Lock Grocery. He remarks on it every time we visit. I tell him we can't build a house this style to live in because I need to get farther from the TV than that would allow. A LOT farther.

Pigeons in an abandoned building across the river. We thought it amusing that they were looking out at us looking in, but the state of the building is no joke!

A cheerful little waterfall up near Canajoharie

Tiny plants, reaching for spring...and a little horsewoman, riding Pepper at sunset.

Unlikely Ephemera

Ephemera ...usually a word used to describe printed material that isn't expected to last too long.

However, this ephemeral rock sculpture sure has something to say, even if it is piled rather than printed....perhaps about patience and skill and time invested, which provides pleasure to strangers passing by. It probably isn't going to last nearly as long as some of the printed kind, which can be found for sale everywhere from Etsy shops to antique stores.

Situated as it is in the flood zone of the river, and with more and more and more rain on the way....

It may already be gone, but it certainly added to our enjoyment yesterday when we found it. 

Nature ain't Nuture

All winter I have been counting what is probably the same single Snow Goose, which has been traveling with a gaggle of Canada Geese. I first saw it flying over the house, then down at the Mohawk in Fultonville, and now for several weeks it has been hanging around at Yankee Hill Lock.

Yesterday it was off by itself and oddly humped and still. At first I thought there was another goose with it, but when it swam out into the river I realized that it has a broken wing.

I know that in lots of places there are so many Snow Geese that they are pests. Alan sees thousands whenever he passes Montezuma on the Thruway. They are listed as a species of least concern and this is just one bird in a gigantic population

Still I was sad....however, life in the wild is rough and it doesn't pay to form attachments with wildlife...

I got a lot of enjoyment out of seeing this goose all winter though.

Saw this flock once down near town

You had to be There

A thing speeding along the shores of the Schoharie Creek

Before picking up the freshly repaired chainsaw yesterday, we briefly went to our favorite birding spots.

Buffleheads

While perusing Buffleheads and Wood Ducks I spotted a....thing....racing down the Schoharie.

It was moving so fast...everything is at or near flood stage...that I could barely get it in the view finder before it was gone.

Next we went down to Yankee Hill Lock, which is on the Mohawk River, to look around some more. The boss soon found a lovely and intricate kinda cairn of carefully stacked stones atop a riverside boulder. He called me over from where I was peering at ducks to take some pictures of it.

Just before I got to him I found myself laughing incredulously as the same....thing...came racing, even faster, down the river towards us. I hadn't mentioned it at Schoharie Crossing, so he thought I was nuts...but we are both used to that.

Anyhow, once again I had to click pretty fast to capture it, but as it was on the same side as we were this time, we got a bit of a better look.....any guesses? And what are the odds we would see it sailing by in both places?