Chance Encounter

We met some dogs down by the river today and had a great time visiting with them. We liked watching them enjoy themselves, all the while behaving perfectly and paying attention to their folks.

They were lovely pups with elegant manners, eager to please and simply delightful to encounter. 

Their people were friendly and pleasant too. We were tickled to run into them while they were giving the pups a little river time this morning. One nice doggie, Willow, I believe, sat down every time she saw me point the camera....at a Great Blue Heron...because she is trained to sit for photos.

The ladies asked the boss to take a group photo for them, but he was not comfortable using the technology of a strange phone, so they waited for me to return from chasing birds up the aqueduct. They gave me permission to share my own pics of them too.....so....we drove away grinning from ear to ear.

Good dogs, nice folks

For Scott

Good Morning

Meow

Carolina Wrens

Look....Probably a youngster. Thanks again, Jonna, for the wonderful feeder

They're back! We stopped seeing or hearing them in late winter after seeing them almost every day all last year. They returned in mid-summer with a brood of three youngsters, hung around the feeders for a couple of days and were gone again.

Yesterday I was awakened by the strident cheering of one of my favorite birds.

Today he was singing on both of the front porches, while what appear to be a second set of young birds eat peanuts on the feeders.

Yay!

Listen....

The Carrot and the Stick

First the stick....the boss wants me to go to Empire Farm Days with him. It's a brutal drive and once you get there you have to walk down miles of aisles of shiny farm machinery....miles....

I used to love to go, couldn't wait and all. It was fun to gather up the stud catalogs so we could choose the bulls we would use to breed the cows, always hoping for something really special next year. I loved the breed association booths, and seeing salesmen who had become friends, and the excitement of seeing it all. However, I am no longer 20, nor 30, not 40, nor 50. Not even 60.....walking all day in the hot sun in a muddy hay field has little appeal.

Still he is good to me and takes me birding almost every day. Since the beginning of the year we have counted 156 species of birds. That's the best ever for me and better than the whole year last year.

And then there's the carrot....if I suffer through the monumental horror trek up the terrifying length of the Thruway and walk through the mud to all those tractors and balers and all, he will take me around the Montezuma wildlife drive on the way home.

I looked at some recent checklists from there....we'll almost certainly see Pied Billed Grebes, Purple Martins, possibly Blue-winged Teal, Redheads, and who knows what else that I am missing for my state list this year....someone even spotted a Black-crowned Night Heron yesterday! I's sure like to see that.....And I could surely get a Farm Side column out of it....

So....do I go...or do I stay home and man the decks here? Hmm.......

Amazing

Linda, this is a watermelon from the seed you sent me. I love it!

"Hey Mom, what's for supper?"

"French Toast."

"Guess I'm gonna be enjoying that then."

....say what!?!??

But yeah, our boy, whom we don't see so very often, was sent to run a job in Albany for a day by his company, so he spent the night here.

Yippee!

He didn't eat any French toast not being in the mood for it, but we sure had a nice visit.

Meanwhile, we are pretty sure we found the wood thief...not that we can really prove it, but.... We spent some time re-marking the wood with even brighter paint anyhow.

Also finally found blueberries. The folks we buy them from normally have either been sold out or just haven't had any so we...or at least I...have been bereft.

Then my mama shared a post from an orchard up near Johnstown, so we went and bought four quarts. Just finished freezing some. You evidently shouldn't wash them before freezing, but rather later when thawed, so that went quickly. I did make sure to pick out all the slightly squashed, smushed, odd-colored, and various "bad" berries for immediate consumption.

They all tasted just fine. Now it is raining with flash flooding watched and warned. Not much good for birding, or getting the beans picked and frozen, but it is what it is.

And the Four O'clocks!! Such Heavenly colors!
Thank you so much!

Emphasis on Ag

Our kids all went to SUNY Cobleskill, studying subjects as diverse as Animal Science, Fisheries and Wildlife, Diesel Technology, and Archaeology. There are so many great programs offered there.

In fact I wish I had known that I could have gone there back in the day, rather than studying Liberal Arts in the county to the north. I learned to type reasonably well but....

Now instead of turning away from ag and ignoring local needs and issues as so many entities are, the school is adding innovative programs that I think are downright inspired.

Read all about it here. 

All in the Family

Dad

Mom

And three scruffy teenagers

Indigo Buntings, last night behind the barn.

Focus vs Situational Awareness

After most of a lifetime on a farm around potentially dangerous animals, definitely dangerous machinery, and possibly dangerous unexpected situations, I'm reasonably aware of what's going on around me....

Except when I'm on birds.

It's gonna get me killed some day.

The other night I was out on the gravel bar on the Schoharie after they let the river down for the rain event. Sandpipers, Yellowlegs, Killdeers and the like were gobbling something out of the mud and I was taking photos as fast as I could click.

A person walked up just out of my peripheral view and stood quietly waiting for me to finish....which took a while.....

Don't know how long she politely waited while I went crazy taking pictures, but I never saw or heard her at all...until I stopped to go back to the car.

Thankfully it turned out to be a nice lady who is a longtime friend of ours.....

Had it been a serial killer at least I would have died happy.

Some of us are nuts...

Another Week

Mysteriouser and Mysteriouser. Is it actually possible for a private citizen..of Connecticut no less...
to post state forest land? Hmmmmm.....

....Another bunch of research links from the Farm Side.

Feeding PA

China can't count on soybeans

Michigan donates too

Snapping up cheap soybeans

The real skinny

There were more....but I seem to have deleted them to make room for next week's fun...now to go delete all these.

That New York Traffic

Slow

Slower

Slowest

A Good Mistake

Cliff Swallows

Although, thanks to one of the county's finest birders, we know where to find and count Cliff Swallows each year, photographing them is a whole 'nother ball game. The place where they are known to nest is on a scary busy road. Stopping to point the camera can be life threatening.

And then...

The other day I rode up to L J Hands with the boss to get some paint to mark the wood pile at his cousin's house. Someone is pilfering when no one is there so.....

On the wire in front of the store were five swallows. A quick glance marked them as Barn Swallows, another species of which I had no photos....point, click, and then off to look and listen for other interesting birds to make a short list while the boss got his paint.

There was even a Wild Turkey crossing the road next to the parking lot....really you can bird anywhere......

Imagine my surprise when I took the photos off the camera a couple of days later and found that four of the five birds were indeed Cliff Swallows. Score!

Immature Barn Swallow...short tail with fleshy gape still visible at the corner of the beak

Just Another

Black-billed Cuckoo, the first I have ever seen, although I have heard them

....walk on the farm

Mourning Dove

Indigo Bunting

Juvenile Cedar Waxwing

Downy Woodpecker

Savannah Sparrow

Common Yellowthroat

ET

Interlude with Sunshine

Feeling enough better to do some porch birding with grandma

Ruby-throated Hummingbird isn't scared of her

Checking out big bird

Osprey Flyover

Ark

We may need to build one. Sure am glad they let the river down this week, because man, oh, man, has it ever rained. It's like being in the Forrest Gump movie where you get every kind of rain there is....

Here we are getting soft rain that barely gets you wet. I went birding in that yesterday and barely had to keep my hand over the camera to shelter it, even though the river was dimpled with drop marks.

Heavier rain that makes the dogs smell funny and assures that the camp towels "drying" on the clothesline will never actually do so.

And duck drowning rain that will practically knock you over if you step off the porch.

A whole summer's worth of rain crammed into just a few days. It is raining now. It was raining then, it has been raining for a long while, and I am afraid it will be raining for a while yet....it can stop if it wants to though, any time now. I am tired of conjugating rain...

Prepared for Flooding

Killdeer

There are a couple of reasons to be glad that the state canal authority is being proactive on the flood front by lowering the river dramatically.

One is flood control of course. Our river is fed by a good portion of the state, so rain most anywhere to the west of us affects our water levels. We have had far too many major floods that might have been mitigated by lowering the water level in the river before the extra got here, so this is a real good deal.

Semipalmated Sandpipers

The other is great birding on the newly exposed mud flats. Our morning visit to the Crossing yielded good ducks and such, but not a single shorebird. We went back down in the evening mostly because we were stressed because our Peggy is sick and we wanted to relax for a bit. I usually walk around while the boss sits at a picnic table, but last night I joined him, just watching the birds go by and the fish rising on the river.

Until....a flock of something tiny flashed by in nearly geometric precision and vanished behind the point by the aqueduct.

Greater Yellowlegs

"Gotta go," I said. "We got peeps."

I hustled off up the rock and mud exposed by the retreating water after them.

Lesser Yellowlegs

I won't bore you with the long, sneaky stalking through the scrubby grass, while two guys who were out on the aqueduct (dangerous and illegal but....) watched me curiously.

Solitary Sandpiper

There were five species of birds involved in the tight little flock. They all fell to feeding on the mud flats, allowing me time to take many photos. There were Semipalmated Sandpipers, which are "peeps", one Killdeer, which is a plover, two Lesser Yellowlegs, a huge Greater Yellowlegs, and a Solitary Sandpiper, or maybe two, in the group.

I am terrible at shore bird ID. I ran them all, even the ones I knew quite well, past the experts at the ABA. I'm glad I did, because I was way off the Semipalmated Sandpipers...thought they were Westerns.

Great Blue Heron

Today it is raining so we may end up really glad that the river is way down....besides the great birding that is. And Peggy is a bit perkier, if still kind of peaked and feverish. Poor baby.

Low water and darned glad of it

Bats

Night was breathing its last gasp. The air was a sweaty tangle of humidity with sluggish east wind tickling the grass. As I went out dawn began snuffling idly around the horizon.

There were bats. At least five fluttered right over the little garden beside the driveway. There were more down by the heifer barn. I was astonished. For at least five years we have seen one Big Brown Bat around the place and only one. It has come in the house several times too.

We used to have Little Browns before the White-nose hit. They bedeviled the boss mightily dive-bombing him when he went into the barn to start morning milking back in the day. There was a cave just across the river where thousands poured out nightly too...what a sight to see! They seem to be gone now as well.

But this, this was incredible. By the time I had the doggos walked I had seen several more, and discovered where their roost is too......but I'm not telling. There are others who are not quite as enamored as I....

Then I walked over to the cow barn in search of that darned Barred Owl and didn't see him. I did see what I think was a single Little Brown Bat fluttering off to roost though. How nice.